Voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are how many people are simplifying their lives, especially with internet searches.
As if you didn’t have enough SEO headaches, how do you ensure that you rank high for voice searches? Forbes asked their Communications Council how and these are the main takeaways for influencing your voice search optimization:
- Choose Long-Tail Keywords: The biggest adjustment you can make is, of course, to your keywords. Optimize your site with long-tail keywords of five to nine words that are highly relevant to your product or service.
- Focus on Local Search: Voice search results rely heavily on local search results that are location-specific or use available business information. So typically, if you optimize for local search, you optimize voice results as well.
- Keep Content Conversational: Searching with your voice is often much longer or more detailed than a keyboard inquiry. Good web content should anticipate any questions your users may have, and then answer them through your content. Think like your audience!
- Optimize for Both: So while voice search is conversational, a lot of traditional SEO is about concise keyword searches. A great place to support both is with your FAQ’s page and to always answer “who,” “what,” “where,” or “how.”
- Don’t Forget Dialects: Where does your target customer live? Every location speaks different languages, dialects, speech patterns, slang, and idioms. So marketers should ensure that keywords are optimized for each specific region they are trying to reach.
- Spelling vs Speaking: Keep in mind that creative spelling of brand names or products can look great visually, but can translate poorly to voice search if there is ambiguity or mispronunciations.
Check out the full list of Expert Panel answers in Forbes’ article for more voice search tips!
