Voice search utilizes speech recognition allowing to search your query by saying it aloud rather than typing it like what is done in a traditional search. It uses speech recognition to understand the query of the person & then tries to find the search result that matches best with the query. When a user searches from a smart phone, it directly directs to the web page; but with smart speakers, it generally reads out the information that best matches with the query.

The industry players who leverage the high amount of traffic through Voice Search are Apple-Siri, Google Home, Amazon-Alexa and Microsoft-Cortana.

How is Traditional Search different from Voice Search?

The four major difference between Traditional Search and Voice Search are:

• The Length of the Query: When you type in the key phrases or keywords, you are more likely to type unclear queries. For example, if you want to search for cameras, you may type in short queries like “latest Cameras”. While, when you use voice search, your search query will be longer & clearer. Here the length of your query is responsible for increasing the relevance of your search results. The length difference in the queries will increase the relevance of your search results.

• Many questions: There will be many more questions compared to statements. Most people use short queries of 3-5 words with text searches. With digital assistants, longer natural questions are most likely to be queried.

• The Intent is stronger: When you optimize your website with voice search, you will be targeting to the niche segment of market. However, this time, the intent will be strong since the user landed on your site due to their queries being relevant to your content.

• The Local Impact is major: The voice search usage is more impactful for local purposes as compared to text search. Location signals are developing as crucial optimization aspects that every company needs to take into consideration.

Basic considerations to be taken care of before optimizing your website for Voice Search

• Domain Authority: The DA of your website has to be more than or equal to 50.
• Sites with SSL certificates: HTTPS websites dominate Google’s voice search results. In fact, about 4% of Google Home result pages are has SSL certificate & are secured with HTTPS.
• Website Speed: The load time of your website shall be less than or equal to 1 second.

How to optimize your website for Voice Search:

• Start by researching keywords:

Search using voice rather than text means that keyword length may increase due to the nature of how we speak.

For example, if you say, “Order Chinese Food”, Google Home is not as likely to verbally recite a list of all the available options. It might take you to the nearest Chinese restaurant which delivers to your address.

• Create a FAQ page for your Website:

FAQ page allows you to further source long-tail keywords about your content. You need to be aware about the questions that can come up to a potential customer's mind regarding your products, services and business. Suppose if you are a Digital Marketing firm, “How to do off page SEO?” You probably have answered this question several times but, in this instance, these often-heard questions are incredibly useful.

Why? Simple: These questions you are overly-familiar with, can lead to the identification of additional long-tail keywords regarding your area of interest, which your site can then seek to answer, and you can optimize.

• Optimize for local search:

For this, you need to update your Local Listing & also Google My Business.

Many searches queries are about the places users wish to visit. It can be a particular query such as “Pasta place in Mumbai”. Alternatively, a suggestion query like, “What are the best Pasta places in Mumbai”.

In this scenario, the best key phrase that is worth optimizing is “Pasta places in Mumbai.” However, if an individual gives  a more general input, like, “pasta places near me,” Google can immediately track the user’s location and give the suggestions for relevant nearby places to the user.

• Optimize for Mobile Voice Searches:

More than half search queries come from mobile devices and about 20% of the mobile search queries are voice searches.

There are a few basics that you need to keep in mind when you want to achieve proper mobile optimization.

1. The resources which are on your site has been crawl-able.
2. Reviews play an important role when ranking for best of searches.
3. Focus on local content. Local queries are three times more likely to take place from mobile devices rather than standard desktops.
4. Be hyper local with title tags and meta descriptions.
5. Ensure your site has a responsive mobile-friendly design.

To sum up, Voice search optimization is gaining popularity and is not going to slow down any time soon. Yes, it is hard work, but Voice Search Optimisation can match your content closer to human language. Thus, it becomes the perfect time to start optimizing your website for voice search & gain the edge over your competition.