While most people continue to type their search queries into engines such as Google, each year more people are saying them instead. This is because of the rise in voice-controlled assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.
If you ask these assistants a question, they will usually tell you the source of the information along with their answers. This source may not be the same as the one that ranks first when people type their questions into a search engine. Why? Because people don’t speak the same way that they type.
Many search engine optimization (SEO) methods are focused on achieving a high ranking for typed searches. These tend not to be grammatically complete or correct sentences, usually containing only fragmented keywords. Voice searches, however, are typically whole questions.
Now that you know why they are different, here are some of the things you can do to get your web pages to rank higher in voice searches.
Write in snippets: When you do a normal search using a web browser, you are sometimes presented with a paragraph of text at the very top, often with some of the words that you searched highlighted or bolded. This is a snippet, and the search engine thinks this provides the right answer to your question.
When someone asks a question using voice search, the featured snippet is often the only answer they will hear. Because the source will be given too, this is an excellent opportunity to gain brand recognition. Make sure that your brand or website name is easily readable though.
It is easier to become the featured snippet for a search query that doesn’t yet have one than to replace an existing one.
2. Semantic search: This just means optimizing your web pages for what people usually mean. For example, the query “films in London” could mean films showing in London or films set in London. If you want to optimize a web page for this query, you’d better know which one people are usually looking for.
Doing this makes it more likely that you will secure that coveted featured snippet or top result position.
3. Keep it casual: Write in an easy-to-understand, conversational style and avoid jargon that is specific to your field where possible. This makes your content easier to automatically read out and easier for the people who searched for it to understand when they hear it.
While there are many more tricks that an SEO & PPC marketing agency will be able to employ, writing your pages with these three tips in mind will help your website rise up the rankings as voice searches become more common.
