Five Ways to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search
What is a Voice Search?
See that little microphone icon on the search bar on your smartphone? That is the what enables you to do a voice search. Instead of typing your request into the bar, you simply tap the microphone and speak (voice input) your request. It’s not unique to Google. Voice search is available across several platforms and device types. You’ve likely used voice search recently; it includes Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Echo and Alexa, and, of course, Siri.
Voice search is a quick and handy method that continues to grow in popularity. Business owners need to stay on top of this trend to ensure their websites are ideally optimized for those using voice search.
How to Optimize for Voice Search
- Leverage local listings
Don’t discount the power of local search optimization, or LSO. These are geographical-based searches tied to online directories. Great West Digital offers a subscription-based LSO service to help a business like yours connect with local markets. This is a must-have for small businesses that rely on community support.
- Optimize your website’s loading time
Web pages that take too long to load are not effective for voice searches. Have your website audited by a professional optimizer to ensure your loading time is not bogged down by broken links, too much text, or oversized photos.
- Build a long-tail SEO strategy
Long-tail SEO keywords are more complex than their simple counter parts – and this makes them more specific as well. However, long-tail keywords do not get as much traffic as shorter phrases. This is because they return hits on very specific criteria. For example, the phrase “pizza in Edmonton” returns more than 18 million results. The phrase “fire roasted pizza authentic Italian Edmonton” only returns 2.5 million results – but if I’m craving an authentic Italian fire roasted pizza in Edmonton, I’m now much closer to my goal! Long-tails trade traffic for higher conversions. They are tricky, so rely on Great West Digital to help you build an effective long-tail SEO strategy.
- Blogging, more blogging, then even more blogging
Blogging provides information and knowledge about your products, which helps to build consumer trust; but blogging has another, massive, benefit. The more you blog, the more keywords you can get on your website. Over time your keyword count builds up and organically helps you rise in search results. This is true for voice as well as keyboard-input searches.
- Structured data markup
A structured data markup is a tool that “marks” elements on your webpage to make it easier for search engines to recognize. This is a strategy done on the back end of your website, so a lot of technical knowledge is needed. Great West Digital offers this service.
The Digital World Moves Fast. We Move Faster.
It can take a lot of effort to keep up with all the strategies that get your website noticed online, but that is why Great West Digital is here. We know these strategies inside out and take care of them for you so you can focus on the aspects of your business that you know and love. Contact us today to learn more
No Comments