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With the advent of smartphones, tablets and off course voice assistants like Echo/ Alexa or Google Home device and some more, the scene of searching information on internet has changed. People are using more and more of voice search options available on their mobile phone. If we see the current statistics regarding the searches being performed around 60% of information search is done by using mobile phones. So typing the keywords to search has taken the back seat and voice search is being used more as it is more convenient and easy.

It is now time for SEO personnel to start thinking on how can they make their content voice search optimised.

Difference between SEO and voice search optimisation

Though there is no wide difference here, if your content is SEO friendly you have already taken the first step towards voice optimisation. SEO optimisation is basically a keyword supported search. You enter a keyword phrase and search engine will give you information on the same and revolving round the same while Voice Search Optimisation is more conversational and local. Since your location is always updated on your mobile phones, so if you ask for any information it will trace your location and search the services near you. The basic structure and technique of both is same, you just need to follow certain steps to get your content to be voice search optimised.

Steps you can follow to voice optimise your content

You are already half done if your content is search engine optimised. But it is always good to be up and ahead with the incoming technology and when it comes to internet search, voice search has picked up the speed of a hurricane.

It has become easier for kids to search their content on internet even if they don’t know typing. Same goes for elderly or natives who are not comfortable with using keyboard functionality. Even if we consider youth, major ones who are using smart phones, even they use voice search because of its ease of use and being conversational.

Steps you should follow to make your content voice search optimised are as follows:

• First and foremost step one should do is to claim their Google My business listing. If it is still pending, just go and claim it. This way Google gathers more information about your business. It updates the address, phone number, kind of business you deal with and what are your working hours. You must be thinking how this is going to help you? Most voice searches are localised, people tend to search for good restaurants, or businesses that run in their vicinity most. So if you are listed in Google My Business listing it increases your chance of being visible in the searches which relate to your business and your location.

• Long tail keywords are what you should practice putting more in your content. If a person is searching he /she is more likely to use keyword phrases in conversational tone like “which restaurant has sea food” though here major keyword is sea food + restaurant but your content should be carrying synonyms of the same and the similar question to be Search engine optimised. This is increased in voice search optimisation, as it gets conversational there. You can start by thinking all the questions one can ask that are related to your business and start documenting them and create pages or content that has the various variations of the similar questions and queries.

• The method that we mentioned in the previous step can also be utilised to make FAQ pages. Here you can have a set of common queries that people can have about your business, also make the questions more conversational and detailed as no more people are going to use keywords like “best restaurant”, they would prefer to ask questions which can narrow down their search. The question will be more like “Where can I get authentic seafood especially prawns”. Providing concise and clear answers to the questions that arises in the voice search is your way to go.

• Last but not the least is how good your website is in terms of loading (whether it is fast or slow) and whether it is user friendly or not. This will make quite a difference, no one has the time to wait and everybody wants information in nick of the time. So if your website takes time to load up or the interface is not user friendly even if you show up in the voice search result, people are not going to stick to your website.

• To check whether your website is performing up to the mark or not, there are various tools which analyses your websites URL, and gives you the overall performance of your site on both mobile and laptop. It also gives you suggestion on how you can optimise your site and will provide images, scripts as well to improve it.

• You can also check whether your website is mobile friendly or not using applications provided by service providers and Google as well, it will give you a score and if it is not a good score, you better start working on it as , if you still have not conquered mobile users , you are losing up to 50% of your potential customers.

• Make your application or website safe and secure, Google gives higher ranking to the sites which are secure, also if a warning is shown before your site even loads up, most of the people would not dare open it, as their systems could be affected.

Voice Search optimisation is not going away any time soon, it’s just at its beginning. It’s always advisable to be ahead of times and technology, more so for SEOs. If you don’t want your content to be left behind and you want to conquer the new world of voice search optimisation, you better start working on it now.