1. Focus on questions

Based on how mobile voice assistants usually work, it is a good idea to start focusing on questions.

Use keywords built around the following words:

• When
• What
• How
• Who
• Why

Certain keywords are more likely to be used when it comes to voice search. Being smart about it can help you get the much-needed edge.

2. Create an FAQ web page

With voice search, questions are more likely to be asked. So what’s better than incorporating just one question in your content? Answer – a web page that is full of questions that potential website visitors may ask.

An FAQ page does the job of answering lots of different questions perfectly. It not only allows you to focus on questions and, therefore, voice search traffic, but an FAQ page also allows smart SEO professionals to use relevant long-tail keywords — which is a key component of successful voice search optimisation and our next point of discussion.

3. Long-tail keywords

Have you ever noticed that our voice queries have more words in them? It is because when we speak we often make complete sentences, which includes additional words that we may just usually skip when typing out our questions in the Google search bar.

For example, we wouldn’t usually type “When is the Queen’s birthday?” in Google. We would just write “Queens birthday”.

Besides, long-tail keywords are easy to optimise for. More than 70% of global searches are long-tail keywords, which also gives great opportunities to smaller websites and blogs to rank for important keywords and topics.

Another reason why targeting long-tail keywords is a good idea is because voice search is more common in local SEO. When compared with global searches, localised searches are more likely to have a buying intent. Long-tail keywords are perfect for such searches because long-tail keywords generally have a better conversion rate than head keywords.

4. Use the Google auto-complete feature

Manually coming up with different long-tail keywords can be a time-consuming task. Fortunately, you don’t have to come up with all keywords manually.

Google has a nice feature that auto-completes/suggests searches that you (as a user) may be interested in. This gives business owners a direction to find keywords in.

Just start with your primary keyword and see what Google comes up with. You can also use your city name to go more local and granular

5. Make your website mobile-friendly

It seems a bit too obvious to mention, but it is so important that we have to mention it anyway.

Since most of your voice searches would be coming through mobile devices, it is absolutely crucial that your website is mobile-friendly.

It does not matter how well you have optimised your content for voice searches and how great and useful your content is, if a user can’t properly access it and engage with it, there is no point.

Too many times we see websites that are not properly designed for different mobile devices. With a mobile-first index, mobile surfing is becoming an even bigger thing. And if you are optimising for voice searches, there is no reason why you should not pay extra attention to the mobile version and design of your site.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, voice search optimisation is still search engine optimisation (or SEO for short). You still have to get the basics right, for example, great quality, relevant and meaningful content that helps others or serves a purpose, good SEO on-page optimisation including elements like meta data (the page title and description you see in Google search results pages) and great blog content to support the website too.

However, you can gain an advantage by being smarter than the others. Use the five tips above to get ahead when it comes to voice search optimisation. If you have any questions about voice search or SEO, let us know.