Tag Archives: How to Optimize Your Content for Voice Search

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Voice Search: How to Optimize Your Content

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Key Points

  • Voice SEO is vital for gaining traffic, in fact, 40% of the total population in the U.S. are actively voice searching.
  • You can optimize your content by creating a FAQ page, using conversation keywords, and understanding your audience.
  • You need to keep your website fast and mobile-friendly to rank for Google snippets.

40.2% of the United States population use voice search features. 71% of those consumers prefer to conduct queries by voice instead of typing.

Additionally, in 2021, one-third of all US consumers owned a smart speaker.

If you don’t have an Alexa or Google nest by now, you probably will soon.

Big tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and Tesla are evolving massively every day. In fact, Elon Musk has stated he hopes to have a robot in every home by 2050.

I mean, have you heard of Neuralink?

But, I’m getting way ahead of myself here. The rest of this content will cover how to keep up with the times and optimize your content for voice searches.

Ready to destroy your competitors? Keep reading!

Voice Search Optimization for Websites (Voice SEO)?

Voice search or voice SEO is the optimization of keywords and keyword phrases for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. According to thought-leading experts, voice SEO is vital for websites to rank effectively in SERPs (search engine results).

As well as searches conducted through voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google Nest.

58% of consumers use voice search to find information about a local business online. Additionally, 27% of the online Google population is using voice search on mobile. One important thing to remember about voice search SEO is that you need to target a natural-speaking language.

That means question keywords and long-tail keywords are vital to voice search engine optimization. Not only will AI affect your Google search, but it may soon affect your smartphones and the rest of your life as it continues to evolve.

First, let me start off with a couple of great keyword research tools you can use starting now:

With that being said, let’s move on to how you can create a great content marketing strategy with voice SEO:

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How to Optimize Your Content for Voice Search

58% of consumers use voice search to find information about a local business online. That means if you’re reading this, you might have been a part of that 58% that asked a voice assistant for an answer. That’s a fairly large number considering, that’s one of the reasons it’s so important to create content that is not just optimized for Google, Bing, or Yahoo, but for voice assistants as well.

Another way to keep your website SEO voice-friendly, you need to use the following words in your content:

  • Who
  • What
  • When
  • Where
  • How
  • Why

Many voice searchers begin with these words. “When did Queen Elizabeth die?” Also, consider conversational context and intent when someone asks a question. “Who wrote ‘The Raven’?”

So, I’ve thrown a lot of random information at you and a lot of statistics to express how important voice SEO is to your digital marketing strategy, so let’s jump into some actionable steps you can take right now to improve your pieces of content:

Know Your Target Audience

If you’ve ever read any of my other articles, then you know I’m always telling you to know your audience! I’m not just talking about demography either. I’m talking about creating and designing an audience persona.

Voice Search Optimization relies on knowing what your audience will ask before they do. So, it’s not exactly mind-reading, but it’s kind of close.

HubSpot has created one of the best Audience Persona Creators I’ve seen. Here’s how it works:

Think if yourself as your own customer. Who are you?

Let’s say you’re a finance blogger and your customers are your readers. Pick an avatar and pick their age. You can use real statistics from your Google Analytics, or you can take a guess.

You’ll then be guided through an in-depth look into who your customer would be. My best advice while doing this is to try and put yourself in the shoes of who you are trying to sell your product or service.

Once you’ve plugged in all of your customer information, you will be given a report about where online your readers hang out, and where you can find the best traffic.

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In a nutshell, your customer persona makes come out looking something like this:

Once you’ve discovered who your audience really is, then you can begin to create content around how they would naturally ask a question or better yet, what questions they haven’t considered asking yet.

For example, if you own a finance blog, then a voice question might resemble this:

“How much money should I save each month if I make $75,000 annually.”

This key phrase is detailed, it’s targeted, and it’s something your audience wants to know. It’s vital to answer your reader’s questions and then some.

Use Conversational Keyword Phrases

As I previously mentioned, keyword phrases are key to being able to optimize for voice searches. Conversational keywords refer to the use of complete sentences and other natural-speaking search queries. In other words, use natural language in your content.

Historically, internet searches were based on smaller searchers such as, “best stores near me.” While these keyword phrases are still useful within your content, you may be missing out on some voice search traffic. That’s one of the reasons it’s important to optimize your site for voice search.

Instead, your content needs to include questions or full-sentence keyword phrases to help boost some of your content for voice SEO strategy.

For example, instead of, “blog writers near me.” You can include, “Here is how to find blog writers near you.”

Moving forward, let’s dive further into how you can improve your SEO for voice search

Have a FAQ Page for Voice Search

SEO and voice search go hand and hand, in fact, a FAQ page lets you provide content around any keywords that you’re trying to rank for. For example, while you may want to address questions through your high-quality pieces of content, your FAQ is a great place to include other more direct long-tail keywords and phrases that your users may find helpful.

In general, good FAQ pages are great for SEO. Additionally, people won’t find any value in answers that don’t directly solve a problem or provide some type of solution.

That means it’s your job to answer any FAQ your audience may ask now, in the future, or during any stage of the buyer’s journey.

Use Google’s Featured Snippets

Google’s search results show listings or meta descriptions where there’s a chunk of information describing a page under a link. Results displayed in this way are called snippets. You’ve probably seen them a million times when conducting any given Google search.

The entity Google states that they display featured snippets when their systems determine that that format with help people diver what they’re seeking in a faster way. They are also especially helpful when on mobile or searching by voice.

Google continues by stating that Featured snippets come from web search listings and Google’s automated systems are the ones that determine whether a page would make a good featured snippet to highlight for a search.

Neil Patel states that you need to answer questions as quickly as possible, use headers, and stay within 50 to 60 characters. Always try to answer the people also asked section of your keyword.

If you can get highlighted by Google, then voice SEO is sure to pick your helpful content.

Additionally, you can submit your content to platforms like Quora, Google News, and Flipboard. This will help you raise your domain authority and rank which will then affect your ability to rank in voice searches.

Use Local SEO

Local SEO is determined to be one of the best ways to target your content for voice searches. Using keywords such as “near me” can help boost your content to be featured as a voice assistance answer to a question.

Local SEO can be boosted by filling out your Google Business Profile (previously known as Google My Business) and creating a Google map business listing. Additionally, creating a local Google ad can help you boost your authority and traffic.

It isn’t necessary, especially if you’re just starting out, but it may be something to consider further down the road.

Also, as a second thought, you may also need to optimize your website for local keywords and mobile-friendliness. The faster your content loads, the faster a voice assistant can find and rely on your informative content.

That’s About It!

Content creation is hard, and if you’re extremely overwhelmed by all of this information, don’t hesitate to reach out to a professional like me.

I got you!

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