Voice search is gaining popularity, a digital marketing trend that won’t lose any momentum even with the turn of the new year. As things stand right now, voice searches account for approximately 4 in every 10 searches carried out across the US. What’s more, 27% of people worldwide rely on it to look up various phrases on their mobile devices. Voice search is certainly huge right now, which is why many brands are adopting voice search optimization SEO strategies to improve their appeal to their markets.

Top-Notch Methods To Optimize Voice Search SEO

Here are some of the best voice search SEO brands that are leveraging them to gain the upper hand over your competitors.

1. Pay Closer Attention To Conversational Keywords

When people search for something by voice, chances are that they’ll use language that’s quite different from type search. Conventionally, the latter entails skipping prepositions and getting to the heart of the matter as fast as possible. For example, someone wanting to find out “what the latest digital marketing trends will be for 2023” will hardly use that phrase as is. Instead, they’ll type into the search bar something along the lines of “digital marketing trends 2023,” which is much easier to punch out.

However, this has changed quite drastically with the utilization of voice search. People tend to communicate with voice assistants more casually, much the same way they would have a conversation with a friend. This means longer search phrases that are more in line with natural language and how we naturally communicate with each other.

And we’re not just talking about long-tail keywords, as even these might not cut it. Instead, voice search optimization demands the use of full questions and phrases. Fortunately, you can get plenty of ideas on what to incorporate from the “People also ask” section on Google’s SERPs.

Let’s take an example from the “digital marketing trends” topic we were discussing. In this case, Google finds that most people often have the following questions when it comes to this subject matter.

• What are the latest marketing trends?
• What are the current and future trends in digital marketing?
• What are the trends in digital marketing for 2023?

And so on. Going forward, you’ll need to incorporate the entirety of these conversational keywords into your content as voice search continues to take root.

2. Human-Driven Multilingual Web Optimization Is The Way To Go

Why should my website be multilingual? It’s great if you’re serving an international market base and for SEO at large, and we’ll explain how. The biggest outright benefit is that, naturally, you’ll have more keywords to work with, some of which may not be as highly competitive in fewer mainstream languages compared to English.

It’s a tactic that many of the top SEO services that cater to foreign markets also implore to enhance CRO by reducing bounce rates from foreign clients who are comfortable in just one dialect.

If you’re taking the multilingual route for voice search SEO, then machine translations may not be ideal for the following reasons.

• AI can miss subtext: For instance, we often use sarcasm quite a lot when talking with each other. However, machine translation lacks the ability to see past what meets the eye.
• It may sound unnatural: With machine translation tools, while the accuracy of the translation might be correct, they may use terms that may sound unnatural to the native ear.
• Accuracy concerns: Sure, there have been some enormous leaps in AI translation, but the error margins cannot be swept under the rug, as even a few vocabulary missteps may hurt your voice SEO campaign.

In a nutshell, you want to get native speakers, and professional ones at that, involved in making your content multilingual. They can better ensure you sound like a natural and authoritative source that they would buy from, which is important for multilingual voice SEO.

3. Don’t Forget To Create A Google Business Profile

How does the Google Business Profile work in the first place? This is a Google tool you can leverage for the uninitiated to determine how your business is presented online to leads who look up your services or products.  It’s easy to manage and practical, although you can also leave this part of your workflow to SEO and link-building service providers to do all the heavy lifting.

Your profile will show up not just in search but on other Google products, such as maps, detailing information that includes:

• Your working hours
• Exact location details
• Products and services, and much more

The reason why you need a Google Business Profile is that a lot of people rely on voice search for local queries, such as “which is the best pharmacy near me?” More people are using voice search optimization to find business listings and details about businesses in their locality. Having such a profile is a great way to hack local and voice SEO simultaneously.  In particular, close to 5 out of 10 voice searchers are on the hunt for details about local businesses.

In terms of how to tweak your business profile for voice search, we’ll start with your business description. You have about 750 characters to work with here, and you want to fill as much of it as you can with those conversational keywords we were talking about.

4. Finetune Even Further For Mobile-Friendliness

Every digital marketing agency worth its salt will emphasize the importance of having a mobile-friendly website. It’s what gives brands the competitive edge and may be the difference between a conversion and a bounce. But you may not be aware of how mobile-friendly is great for voice search optimization.

If you consider the medium through which voice search occurs, you’ll find that the most popular conduit is smart assistants on mobile devices. In other words, the lion’s share of voice search traffic comes in through mobile platforms. If your website isn’t compatible with these, then your voice search optimization strategy may be dead in the water.

To ensure your website is more voice search optimized, here are a few suggestions from some leading SEO services:

• Incorporate a more responsive layout: You require a web design that works flawlessly regardless of the specific device dimensions in question. That means web pages should load up correctly, and texts shouldn’t appear over one another or mashed up. You can get ahead of such issues by imploring a AI website builder that possesses responsive templates in the first place.
• Add an FAQ section: These fulfill the exact needs of users and are great for voice and general SEO because conversational language is typically fueled by user queries, as we’ve mentioned previously.
• Optimize your images and use alt-text tags: Image optimization improves website loading speed, which is always great for voice search optimization and your search rankings. Furthermore, you also want to include alt-text tags with your images. That’s because many people who use voice search may have visual challenges, and alt-text tags help individuals understand your images better, which may increase your site’s dwell time.

5. Bolster Domain Authority To Make Your Business Heard (Literally)

If you’ve ever used a voice search assistant like Siri, you may realize that the AI often just reads out the top spots and leaves it up to the user to explore the other options by hand, should they choose. And chances are, they never do.

So when dealing with voice search optimization, it’s first come, first served, just like it’s always been the case with contemporary SEO. The top search results hog all the traffic, with very little trickling past the first page. One way you can hack it to the top of this line is with featured snippets, and the best part about these is that you don’t necessarily need to top SERPs.

Just to emphasize how powerful featured snippets are for voice search optimization, it’s important to note that they account for over 40% of voice search results. To build featured snippets, create an FAQ page and keep the language simple, i.e., nothing more than 9th-grade level language.

Beyond that, here are some other ways website owners can improve domain authority:

• Obtain more high-quality backlinks for your website: The professionals at Outreach Monks opine that you may want to offer value in return for this, and one way is through seeking out guest posting opportunities from authoritative sites. Of course, you’ll need to pitch high quality content to get taken seriously.
• Take out bad links that are hurting your SEO: That includes broken links and any that are inserted into content pieces unnaturally.
• Create a sitemap: This is great for search bots and will also improve your site structure and, consequently, its user experience, which becomes even more important for voice SEO.

Improving domain authority can be tough work, and most companies choose to outsource link building services instead.

Voice SEO Is No Longer The Future. It Is Now!

Voice search has often been portrayed in many circles as a somewhat distant future. However, with 72% of people attesting to having used a voice search assistant at least once, the reality is that it is now present. Voice search is an easy and convenient way for users to get the answers they search for, which is why many people prefer voice search over typed search. It’s therefore important that brands strive to build a robust voice search SEO strategy by, among other things, ensuring mobile-friendliness, enhancing domain authority, and embracing multilingual website optimization.

Author Bio

C.R.Venkatesh

CEO at Dot Com Infoway

Madurai, Tamilnadu, India

Venkatesh is a serial entrepreneur with a distinct passion for taking nascent businesses to great heights. An early entrant in mobile application technology, Venkatesh grew his flagship company, Dot Com Infoway (DCI), to be recognized as one of the world’s leading digital marketing, web, and mobile app development & marketing companies.

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