3 Sure-Fire SEO Tactics for Increasing Your Voice Search Traffic

Figured out that Voice traffic converts better than your regular traffic?

You’re not alone. Many companies are just now realizing the benefits of Voice traffic.

Voice results are JUICY.

So, how do you optimize your site for Voice Search traffic?

First, OPTIMIZE your performance. Yes, it seems this is mentioned in every third article on this site, but it bears repeating—speed and performance MATTER, and in many cases, they MATTER MOST. Improving your performance is a continuous thing. You need to keep working on it day in and day out.

Second, talk with your in-house or outsourced SEO(s) about:

FEATURED SNIPPETS

Featured snippets are the snippets of text that appear in search results. A snippet can be a video, a paragraph, a table, or a list. When you ask Voice Assistants a question, they often read the Featured Snippet(s) from the source they’re referencing. Want to be that source? Provide the best and/or most optimized answer to the question. (Hint: Start by looking at the People. Also Ask questions.)

USING SCHEMA METADATA (aka STRUCTURED DATA)

Schema is markup language that helps search engines understand your content. (In a nutshell, you provide additional information to help the search engines understand your information.)  The easier the search engines access your content and the MORE they understand about it, the more chances you have for visibility.

IDENTIFY AND TARGET YOUR LONGTAIL KEYWORDS

Voice searches are more extended than text searches. Users speak to their phones as if they were talking to someone, so the searches are often more casual and more precise/specific. Most traffic folks spend their time/money on short keywords and phrases even though more than 65% of search queries are longtail. It’s understandable because the dataset is bigger and easier to understand. However, specific questions from Voice Search often convert 4-6x+ better than shorter words/phrases. Identifying the long tail roots (the keywords/phrases within a string) is the first step to building your program. After that, you’ll want to target them with both organic and paid efforts. Maybe even Social too.

CHECK YOUR LANGUAGE

There’s a lot of buzz about User Intent these days. What’s the user’s goal by asking X? The industry is overflowing with vendors trying to sell you their proprietary scoring systems to precisely identify the intent of each visitor. In the big scheme of things, you determine a lot of your own traffic by readying your site, of course, and then being “the best” response to a user’s specific question/need. Once a visitor gets to your site, your adoption to cart (or conversion to action) depends on how good you are at showcasing that answer.

Be clear. Be quick. Be concise.

One of the easiest ways to show someone that you know what they’re asking about is to speak in their language. Voice searches are conversational in tone. They’re imbalanced (the user does most of the talking), often wordy, and laden with clues. How you answer the user’s question or respond to their comment, how solid your response is, and how easy it is to act upon typically determine the success of what happens next. But the way you get the visitor there and keep them there is to speak in natural language as if you’re having a conversation with them. Write for the user how you would talk to a new friend. Cheesy? Perhaps. Effective? Incredibly. For both visitors and traffic drivers.

OPTIMIZE FOR LOCAL

Able to sell/deliver locally? Want to be seen in the “near me” results?

Then, you’ll want to make your site as Proximity-friendly as possible. (Proximity = how close you are to getting the product/service. Faster/closer results come first.)

Local/near me searches are currently some of the most popular Voice transactional searches. (Many Voice searches are still for calls/texting functions, navigational and weather queries, and the like, but from a commerce perspective, the local/near me stuff currently reigns Supreme.)  

Start by optimizing your Google Business listing (Hello, Recommendation from the Dinosaur Age. Nice to meet you.)  Complete your business information and keep it updated.

Then, build out and enable your Location Extensions. Explore ads in Maps.

Develop a good Store Locator page (this works even if you’re selling out of your warehouse) with solid directions. Make sure to mention anything of particular interest around you – landmarks, malls, popular restaurants, etc. List your address, phone number, contact information, operational hours, etc.

Have a question about SEO for Voice? Have a tip you’d like to share? Tweet @amyafrica or write @info@eightbyeight.com.

P.S.

Tips about how to improve your Voice Commerce can be found here.

Tips for optimizing your site for Voice Search can be found here.

Tips on why you need to optimize for more than just Google can be found here.