Whether it’s a speaker or smartphone, voice search usage is rapidly increasing. Leading research firms are predicting that somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of all searches will be conducted via voice by 2020.
Now is the time for brands to create an optimization strategy for voice search in order to get ahead of the curve
Here are the five steps to getting started with your VEO strategy:
VEO - " Voice Engine Optimization "
1. Optimize Your Business Listings
It’s essential to keep your business listings clean and your name, address, and phone (NAP) data consistent.
Approximately $10.3 billion are lost each year just because of missing and inaccurate listings. Make sure you’re providing accurate business information to users.
2. Speed Up Your Website
Why is this relevant to voice search? It’s because mobile voice search users are looking for immediate on-the-go results.
Additionally, Google has officially announced that their “speed update”, which enables page speed in mobile search ranking, is now rolling out for all users worldwide.
The time it takes to load the average mobile landing page is 15 seconds. The best time should’ve been under 3 seconds.
If you aren’t ranking well on mobile search because of speed issues, then it might affect your voice search opportunities.
3. Your New Content Strategy: Focus on Questions
Forty-one percent of people who use voice search say it feels like talking to a friend.
These people are engaging with their voice-activated speakers as if they were human. Thus, the way in which they conduct voice searches also differ.
They don’t simply say keywords. They ask questions.
Focus on using conversational, long-tail keyword phrases in your content as this will help you to better answer natural language questions.
You need to find the natural language keyword phrases that your target audience is most likely to ask.
4. Your New Content Strategy: Provide Answers
When you optimize for featured snippets, you’re likewise optimizing for voice search. About 40.7 percent of voice search answers come from featured snippets.
Here are a few things you can do:
- Create content that answers questions (i.e., FAQ page) to drive conversions at an easy reading level. (One paragraph 9th-grade reading level is best).
- Update your content often. Keep it fresh.
- Markup language: Questions should be marked up properly in <h2> headers.
- Answer any existing questions on your Google My Business Questions and Answers section.
- Create compelling questions about your products and services that will drive conversion.
- If you don’t have content to begin with, look at your reviews to source FAQ content ideas. The reviews you already have are written with natural language and give you content on what your customers are asking about.
5. Test It
Voice search is still new so you should take it upon yourself to test the voice search function proactively.
How to Test Voice Search
Test different devices: Smart Speakers vs. Mobile or Google Assistant vs. Alexa vs. Cortana vs. Siri
What are the results generated?: Where and who are answers pulled from?
Single vs. Multiple Listings: How many listings does each device/assistant offer you?
Rankings: Where are you ranking for your most common questions? Where are your competitors ranking?
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