How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search @ TwentySixForty

Voice Search Optimization.

In April of 2011, Apple released Siri. This marked the first main-stream, voice-driven search technology of it’s kind and it has come a long way since then. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana are the other big players in the market currently. It doesn’t matter if you are in your car or cooking dinner, if you have one of these devices within range, you can search the internet with just the sound of your voice.

What is Voice Search?

Voice search is the ability to search the internet using your voice instead of typing text into the search bar.

What is The Difference Between Voice Search and Typed Search?

The average person is able to type 35 to 40 words per minute but they can speak between 100 and 130 words per minute. This makes voice search much faster so, in a time when instant gratification is so highly valued, we can see why more people are using their voice to search the internet.

Voice Searches are Longer than Typed Searches.

Typed searches are typically between 1 and 3 words long where voice searches are usually 5 words or more. Voice search allows people to be more specific about their search queries.

Voice Searches are Usually Question Based.

When we do a text-based search, we usually enter a couple of words and visually filter out the search results for what we are looking for. When we make a voice search, it is usually in the form of a question and we expect an answer in return.

Voice Searches are Usually Locally Driven.

People tend to use voice search while on the go so many of these queries are location-based. Statistics have shown that voice searches are commonly used to find local businesses.

How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search.

Make Sure Your Website Loads Fast.

It is well known that Google’s voice search algorithm uses your website page speed as a key ranking factor. Many people making voice searches are on the go and don’t have time to wait for an answer so if Google is to give their users a quality experience, they need to provide answers very quickly.

The first step is to determine the current speed of your website. You can check the mobile and desktop speed of your webpages at PageSpeed Insights. This will show you the current speed of your website and provide you with suggestions to improve it. Pay special attention to the mobile page speed as it is very important in terms of voice search optimization. Here are some quick things you can do to improve your website’s speed:

Use a quality hosting provider – More here: The Best Web Hosting in 2020.
Optimize all of the images on your website – More here: Best WordPress Image Optimizer.
Use a good caching solution.
Eliminate broken links.

Use an FAQ Page on Your Website.

When optimizing your website for voice search, it’s important to understand the types of questions your users will be asking. Using an FAQ page is a great way to answer their questions and it gives Google a place to get answers for voice queries. Google tends to choose answers that are brief and to the point so try to make your answers complete but short. The average voice search result in Google is 29 words long. It is also important to make your answers simple and easy to understand. If you don’t already have a FAQ page on your website, this is a very easy way to optimize your website for voice search.

Voice Search for Businesses.

Make sure all of your business information like address, business hours, phone number and any other important details are up to date and correct. Open and optimize your Google My Business listing, Yelp listing, Apple Maps Connect listing and Yelp listing. Google dominates the search engine market share so many people don’t consider any other search engines when developing their SEO strategy. This is not the case when it comes to business listings and voice search. Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant each have about 35% of the market share. Amazon Alexa is 3rd with about 25% followed by Cortana with about 20%. This means if you really want to set up your business for success, you need to consider more options. Apple, Amazon and Microsoft do not use Google My Business for their query results so if you only sign up with Google My Business you are missing out on about 65% of voice assistant driven business. Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft each get their business listing information from different sources.

Siri’s main sources are Apple Maps Connect and Yelp.
Google’s main source is Google My Business.
Cortana’s main sources are Bing & Bing Places and Yelp.
Alexa’s main sources are Yelp. and Yext.

As you can see, if you only focus on Google for your business SEO strategy, it is not going to cut it anymore. You need to be listed on all of the above listings if you really want to be competitive.