Voice SEO: Tips to improve your voice search optimization
Over the years, content strategies have been known to use articles, blog posts, images and once in a while, video as the main sources of content over the internet. While these avenues have been a great way to drive traffic and promote SEO, some methods such as voice SEO have been overlooked. The way people search for information online has changed significantly over recent years. Podcasts, for instance, is a voice SEO option that helps to develop an intimate connection with the listeners and potential consumers. This is an excellent way to build a reputation, make a brand for yourself while at the same time, furnishing rich content to your website.
Voice SEO may have started as a simple concept, but it has revolutionized the search industry. It's one of the main trends in 2020 and is bound to be a huge theme for 2021. Voice technology recognition has significantly improved since its inception. It has gained a lot of mileage for its convenience to use a speaker with an assistant rather than to type. Google claims that at least 20% of the queries on mobile Apps and android devices are made with voice. The ease to search content over the internet by using your voice rather than typing queries in the search bar is second to none. People are increasingly using voice search via their smartphones, tablets or through voice assistants such as Google Home, Alexa, Siri just to name a few.
Below are some essential tips and strategies that can help optimise voice searches;
- UNDERSTAND YOUR TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
Before jumping into how one can optimise their voice search, it’s paramount to optimize your website and attract traffic flow. You could be doing everything right, but if your site’s not technically sound, it may well be underperforming. Having content that is easily pronounceable is beneficial for voice SEO. The goal is to have good audio and sound skills to enable voice assistance to pronounce it correctly. To create a well-formatted audio content, technical requirements such as a good recording studio hardware such as Teko broadcast is a technical essential.
- IMPROVE YOUR SITE SPEED
Voice SEO is almost exclusively used on smart and mobile devices and it goes without saying, a page that takes ten seconds to load is more likely to suffer consumer bounce back as compared to a page that loads in just a second. Whether it's voice search or text search, if you want to improve your SEO, your site should load in a flash of a second.
- PERFECT YOUR LOCAL SEO
Majority of the people browsing the internet are often looking for something local such as business information like the nearest restaurant, hairdresser or even school. It's therefore important to ensure your page is up to date with the correct address, contact details and working times. Other ways to optimise your local search include building online reviews and structured data markup such as Schema.
- FOCUS ON SHORT ANSWERS
Unlike typed google searches, voice queries read off the first answer. An appealing aspect to voice SEO is providing short answers to common FAQs. The simpler it is to access a relevant answer, the higher the likelihood that Google will rank your website first.
