Voice search is developing at a fast pace. It is expected that 50% of all searches made by voice search by 2020. With such a huge amount of potential there, it is also understandable why more websites are trying to rank in place zero on the search engines.
Find out more about how to rank in the answer box on Google
How to rank for voice search
Google looks at three main factors:
- Relevance: Does your website answer the user’s question in a concise manner?
- Distance: Mainly used for locality, so how close is your businesses location from where the user is?
- Prominence: How well does your page rank against its competition? Do you have good reviews?
60% of consumers say star rating is the most important factor in a purchase decision and 87% won’t consider business with a low number of reviews.
If you consider each of these when optimising your website, you will have a higher chance at coming up results.
Top tips for optimising your website for voice search
These are the websites that have identified their areas of search traffic and have been optimised to fulfil the consumer experience, making it the best it possibly can be.
Understand how consumers are using voice search. Before you begin anything, you should completely understand the way in which voice search can be used and how your target audience is using it. This will give you a better insight into how you can optimise your website for their needs and rank in the voice search. Apple offers a complete guide on all the many ways Siri can be used. Looking at this guide may be useful for you to get a better understanding of how your website can be fully optimised for the facilities of voice search.
Your website needs to be mobile responsive. Having a mobile friendly website is one of the key signals that Google will look out for when ranking your website for voice searches, most of which will be made on mobile devices.
As well as being mobile friendly, your website must also be local search friendly. This means that it is optimised for its location. Including your business name, address, local phone number, opening hours and directions, are just a few of the main pieces of information that should be clearly displayed on your website ready for Google to crawl.
Think about the queries to add to your page titles. These are the things that you know consumers will be saying into their devices when using voice search. For example “What is the best coffee shop in York”. Adding phrases like “The best” will be picked up on by Google and give your website a better chance of appearing in the SERPs.
It has been reported that websites get 4.8 times more engagement from intelligent searches (including voice search) compared to standard searches so it is well worth considering optimising your website for voice search as usage continues to rise.
