What you need to know when optimizing your website for voice search

So if you have a website, and your potential customers have a mobile phone and a tongue, it's time to learn how to optimize a website for voice search.

The study conducted by Stone Temple found that in 2019, voice search ranked a confident fourth among the most preferred search tools. The result is worse than last year, and nevertheless, it is more than 50% of all respondents.

According to PwC, 71% of respondents prefer to enter voice queries rather than traditionally type them with their hands. 65% of respondents aged 25 to 49 use voice technology at least once a day which is unexpectedly higher than that of the generation of 18-24-year-olds (59%) which is considered to be the driver of these technologies.

Back in 2016, Internet Trends noted in their study that 22% of local business queries came from voice search.

Entering long, detailed queries manually is time-consuming, but saying them aloud is easy. If text queries most often contain 2-3 words, the voice query consists of 3-5 words and most often they have a "long tail".

People often use voice search on the go to quickly find a place or solution. Therefore, from year to year, the presence of question words in them only increases.

An interesting fact: marketers note that, depending on the question word used, the user's interest in the desired product/service and, the willingness to perform the target action will differ, respectively.

For example, a person, who is interested in how to do something, will be "colder" than someone who is looking for where to do it.

Once again: 22% of users turn to voice search on mobile devices when they search for information about local businesses. These are "near me" queries that are familiar to everyone, whose share has grown for events, for example, by 500% between 2015–2016 and 2017–2018. So if you have a local business, voice search is a must-have.

A study by the Backlinko team showed that Google prefers to give specific answers to voice queries right in the search results. Such a response block typically contains approximately 30 words.

You can use several options to help the search engine select the information on your website that is suitable for responding to a specific query.

How to help the search engine respond to a user? Of course, create a section with frequently asked questions and answers to them. Indeed, according to statistics, the search results to voice queries are 1.7 times more often generated from FAQ pages compared to conventional search results.

40.7% of responses to voice queries are in rich snippets. So take care of the structured markup design on your website. This is especially important for smart speakers: both Google Home and Amazon Echo only read out one answer. And the user will not be able to view other options like in mobile search results. Google's Structured Data Markup Helper can help you generate rich snippets.

We have already said that voice queries are longer and colloquial in comparison with regular ones. Therefore, follow what your mobile audience is looking for and use the appropriate phrases in the texts (often these will be low-frequency queries). This can be done using well-known tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs or Serpstat.

If you're already scrolling through your mind how monstrously bloated your site will be because of pages optimized for hundreds and thousands of long, natural queries, then don't do that. Write longreads; it's fashionable, and even in them, you can give answers immediately to dozens of queries or even more with the proper level of imagination. And create the "Blog" section on your website as it is appropriate in any industry.

By the way, a study conducted by Backlinko showed that less than 2% of all voice search results contain an exact keyword in the Title.

People often send voice queries from mobile devices literally on the go, so they don't have time to wait two to three seconds while the page is loading. According to Backlinko, the optimal loading time of the page optimized for voice search is 0.54 seconds.

The easiest way to find out how your website is doing in terms of the speed and what needs to be improved is to go to Google PageSpeed Insights.

Western webmasters believe that the Ahrefs Domain Rating indicator affects the website getting into the search results of voice queries. The optimal DR value is 77 and higher, according to Backlinko.

This is a high value; in order to achieve it, you need to constantly develop the resource, you need to at least fill it with high-quality unique content, work with the link mass. No one has forgotten about the website age, although it is much more difficult to influence this indicator.

If you have a local business and you still haven't got a card in Google My Business, do it at least for the voice search. Specify the correct business category, write down the address, phone number, and working hours. This will significantly increase your chances of appearing in search results for a hyperlocal voice query.

If you already have company cards, do not forget to keep them alive: add relevant photos and work with reviews. Remember that rating stars are also displayed in the results and may affect the user's decision.

Google often displays an extended video block in response to natural queries. Make videos that respond in detail to popular user queries, provide them with extended description and post them on your website. This will give another chance to be above the search results.

If you approach the development of your website responsibly, then in general, it is already prepared for voice search. Above, we only talked about the main points which you need to focus on for the successful promotion. They are the following: