growing in scope, becoming trending all over, this technology is sure to stay. And it is in your hands to make the best use of it, especially for the purposes of SEO and digital marketing.
As the trend is towards voice searches, there is a simultaneous trend towards taking businesses online to become more available to the target audience. But with so many businesses online, you need to take steps to make your business rank over the search engine at the top positions. So, basically, there are two things in your hands. First, bringing your business at the top positions on the search engines and second doing that for voice searches, because that is how most people will search their queries. So, the need is to optimize your website for voice searches. There are numerous ways to go about doing that.
Let's first examine how voice searches operate before moving on.
What are Voice Searches and How They Work?
Voice searches are a feature offered by the search engines where you can search your queries by giving voice commands. There is usually a mic in the search box, you can press this mic icon and then speak to do your search, or you can simply start speaking by prompting the search engine. For instance, if you have to make a voice search on Google, you need to say “OK Google” before stating your query. The search engines process your voice commands and then read out to you the top answer that they find. So, basically, if you are targeting to rank through voice searches, the top position is your priority because that is what the search engine will read out as its result. And here are some ways that you can get this top position.
Optimizing Your Website for Voice Search?
Get an Online Listing
This step is critical if you are a local business. With an online listing, you list your business over the search engines. This is important for the search engines to show you in their results. Moreover, whenever the users are searching for any query regarding a particular product or service, the search engines tend to show business listings first, especially if it is a voice search. So having your business listed is an essential step in optimizing your website for voice searches.
Keep As Low A Page Loading Time A Possible
Just like people tend to stay on websites offering high speed and an exceptionally low page loading time, the search engines also tend to show such sites on the top of their search results. So, it is vital that you keep the page loading time on your website extremely low so that the chances of your website being read by the search engines in the voice search results are high.
Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
Usually, the queries asked in a voice search comprise of long sentences. So, using long-tail keywords on your website poses better chances of your website ranking higher on the search engines. It is better if you focus on queries in question forms while using long-tail keywords. Most people tend to ask questions during a voice search. For instance, if they want information about a particular thing, say social media marketing, they will not simply speak “social media marketing” in their voice searches. Instead, they will tend to ask questions like “what is social media marketing” or “how is social media marketing done.” So, when you add such questions to your website, you automatically optimize it for voice searches, and the chances of you getting higher ranks and search engines reading out your answer as a voice search result are higher. Utilize local search terms
When looking for local services, people frequently use voice searches.
For instance, while using voice search, users won't just say "social media services; but rather "social media services around me' or "social media services in (name of a certain city);
By including such keywords on your website, you may optimise it for voice searches and have your website appear at the top of search engine results.
Keep it Responsive
Most voice searches are performed through mobile phones. So, when optimizing your website for voice searches, it is important that you keep your website responsive and mobile-friendly so that the users can get good user experiences while surfing through your website even on their mobile phones.
Conclusion
So, these are some ways that you can optimize your website for voice searches. This optimization is highly essential if you want your business to scale up. This is a competitive business environment, and you have to be proactive at every step of the way. If not, you hardly stand a chance, and you and your business might get ousted even before you are able to kick start it. So, it is crucial that in this business environment, you keep up with the latest trends. Voice search is one of them and a very trending one. It can go a long way in boosting your business operations and leading the path of business success for you. So, follow the best practices that you can to keep up with the trend and keep your website fully optimized for voice searches.