How to best optimise your content for voice search in 2018

It’s inevitable.

The amount of voice searches across all search engines are increasing as each day passes, and are expected to account for billions of pounds worth of revenue and online sales in the next couple of years or so.

Optimising your website and your content for voice searches is important, as attracting as many of those searchers as possible to your website is an easy, quick way to gain conversions; whether it be enquiries or actual online sales.

Constant keyword research is important. Identifying what keywords (and more importantly, key questions) are being searched in your industry is the starting point needed to write solid, strong content that’s going to appease to the search engines and your new potential traffic.

When a voice search is triggered, Google (and other search engines) will scan through website content of websites that would normally rank for similar keywords, and will attempt to display the most accurate result based on the information provided on that webpage.

Having clear, concise content separated by bullet points / numbered bullet points allows the search engine to recognise that you have helpful content on your website that is structured for a reason. If your content is clearly intended for the type of search that a user has made, your snippet of text will be picked up on and displayed to the user.

A prime example of this would be writing a page on your website with a comprehensive recipe on how to cook chocolate brownies. When someone then voice searches:

• “How do I make chocolate brownies?”
• “Hey Google, find me a recipe for chocolate brownies”
• “How much flour do I need to make chocolate brownies”
• Or even, “How long should I cook brownies for?”

..your website’s content will be displayed. Not only that, but in this instance, Google makes it very clear that your website is the one that contains the useful information. It will often pull through your content to their results page and add a divider underneath it and hold it at the top of the page for the user to read.

Going forward, having as much content as possible that is extremely helpful to a wide range of audiences is the easiest way to gain traction with voice search. Of course, relevancy is important so don’t go writing recipes for chocolate brownies when you’re trying to rank higher than other estate agents!

If you have any queries about the above, or are looking to optimise your website for voice search; get in touch with us and we’d be happy to help!

Square Media is Northamptonshire’s premiere Web Design & Marketing Agency experienced in developing effective content and marketing strategies for forward-thinking companies in the local area. Our team of specialists consistently deliver outstanding results working in a variety of areas such as Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing Consultancy, Pay Per Click (PPC) and AdWords Management amongst a wide range of other services.