How Voice Search Can Impact SEO in 2019

I firmly believe in being future ready when it comes to technology. We have so many new features and developments coming up almost on a daily basis. Voice search, for instance, may have many glitches but I think that every website will have to include this feature in the coming years.

In fact, Google recently stated that by the year 2020, most website sessions will be carried out without the screen. So you will no longer have to “Type” or “Click”. You simply will have to give voice commands.

How does affect SEO optimization? Let me take you through it and help you understand why this feature defines the future of SEO.

What is Voice Search and How Does It Work?

Voice search is simple to understand. You speak into your device such as a smartphone or home assistant and provide a voice command. For example “Which is the best Indian Restaurant near me?” This command is the keyword that initiates the search.

How do we know if voice search will really pick up in the future? Take a look at the new devices in the market such as Google Home and Amazon Echo. They rely entirely on voice search.

With voice search, speech recognition is used to understand the query made by the user. This either directs the user to a specific website in case of a mobile phone or provides the relevant information to answer the query in case of a home assistant device.

How Voice Search Will Impact SEO

This is extremely simple to understand. The way we speak is very different from the way we type. So, all your efforts in SEO should be directed towards making it easier for the algorithms to understand what you are saying.

I suggest a few simple techniques to make your website ready for voice search:

Keywords Must Change :

Like I said before, you don’t type in or key in keywords the same way in which you speak. So, in the year 2019, the most important keyword trend is the length of the keyword.

People are more likely to use a sentence for a voice search than a random phrase. This means that keywords will also be much longer. For instance a person who types “‘X’ Movie Timings in ‘Y’ Theatre” is more likely to say “What Time is ‘X’ movie playing in ‘Y’ theatre”. It is therefore advised that websites must switch to long tail keywords in order to enable voice search.

Websites Should Be Optimized for Mobile Phones :

How often will you find someone talking into their PC to initiate a voice search? While that is possible, we often relate voice search to a smartphone or a similar mobile device.

According to studies conducted by Google, 60% of searches today come through mobile devices. 20% of these users are utilizing the voice search option. And, this number is rapidly increasing.

So if you want to stay ahead in terms of SEO, the first step according to me is to optimize content for all mobile devices. I also say that you should take home assistants and speakers into consideration when creating this content to really become future proof.

Speed is everything :

Everything is fast today; the internet, the processor of your smartphone, the response time of apps and just about anything that you think of. We live in an age of speed. Everyone wants information instantly.

When I think of voice search, what I would like is to be able to actually have a conversation with my device. To enable this, you must ensure that your website loads faster. Of course, this is true even for traditional search options.

The website must respond fast and also function well on a mobile device. The best way to do this, if you ask me, is to compress all the website files and to optimize all the images and videos on your website.

Oh, and don’t forget cache. Use it well to improve the speed of the page. Cache helps remember previous searches and even passwords and other data to make navigation and search easier for the user.

Add the FAQ page :

When I have any doubt with respect to a brand or a product, the first thing I do is look for the FAQs section. This, I guarantee, is a trend among all users.

Every website must have a detailed FAQ page for their products and services. Think of all the queries that customers usually have and compile the content accordingly.

These FAQ pages should have a very simple, colloquial tone. This means that all the question should be framed in first person, just as a real human being would ask them. Of course, as mentioned above, the keywords used in these pages must also be entirely conversational.

Optimize for Answer Boxes:

Google has introduced Answer Boxes to make it easier for customers to search for content. Now, let’s say you are comparing car insurance, the answer box in the search engine results, will ask you for the registration number of the car. Once this is provided, a quote is prepared based on the car that you are looking for insurance for.

What does this do? It just makes user experience seamless. With voice search, Answer Boxes will also use voice commands. The content on the website should also consider the Answer Boxes.

This feature works best with health, conversions and calculation, how to guides, FAQs and any Question Based Queries. Making sure that the website ranks well on search engines, providing easy to read and short paragraphs, using lists, including “how to” sections and having FAQs on the website is the best way to optimize content for Answer Boxes. The technique is simple, the content that you provide must be the best way a query can possibly be answered.

Focus on Local Search: 

“Find XYZ Near Me”, I think this is the most common type of voice command given by people today.

With voice search, people are most likely to look for products and services close to them. That is why updating the name, address, email ID and phone number for the business on all online platforms can improve search engine rankings. I cannot stress enough about ensuring that these details are consistent across all platforms including social media.

The user is going to use the words “near me” which triggers several Google algorithms that will feature results based on the address and location of the business.