8 Changes You Should Make to Your Website For Voice Search

The age of voice search is here. With the proliferation of electronic assistants like Google, Alexa, and others, more and more people are using voice search by asking their electronic assistant questions.

Here are eight things you need to do to your website to cater for this trend.

1. Design Your Site as Mobile First

The days are over of designing websites and telling your customers which browser to use. Now you need to ensure that your sites work on all sorts of mobile devices before you even bother looking at what it looks like on a PC browser. The great thing is, when you design for mobile first, your site will automatically be light, move faster, and be more apparent to the viewer.

2. Create a FAQ

The more questions you can answer for your users, the more questions these electronic assistants can answer for their clients. Make a list of questions that your users might ask or have asked to form your FAQ. Make sure you title it with the question that you’re providing the answer to.

3. Use Structured Data Markup

This is also sometimes termed “schema markup.” It’s just a type of HTML that you embed in the code of your site that helps search engines find you more easily when their customers are using voice search. If you use self-hosted WordPress to build your site, try using the plugin Schema & Structured Data for WP and AMP (https://wordpress.org/plugins/schema-and-structured-data-for-wp/).

4. Use Featured Snippets

This code will tell the search engines that this information is essential. It will help your search results look better and be more informative to searchers. A useful plugin for this is the one mentioned above, but you can also use Schema All in One Schema Rich Snippets to accomplish it (https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-schemaorg-rich-snippets/). This works well to ensure that you are getting your information in a form that the voice search technology works for.

5. Write Content with Voice Search in Mind

The most impressive thing about voice search is that it’s essential to use more natural language – language that your customers would use when searching for the information they need. This means you need to use more long-tail keywords, use questions for titles, and make sure you answer your users’ questions within the content that you share. If relevant to you, using more locally-focused content will also help you get more voice search results.

6. Focus on User Intent

Whether it’s your FAQ, navigation, or other content, it’s imperative that you focus on your users’ intent at the time they are searching for the content. You have people in your pipeline in all stages of their buying journey, and locally-focused needs to be considered as you develop your content strategy.

7. Boost Page Loading Time

This is one thing that is never going to change regarding your website. The faster it loads, the better. The more you can optimize to ensure that your site loads as quickly as possible, more rapidly than three seconds, the more likely your audience is to not only find you but also to consume your content.

8. Pay Attention to Tech Changes

Remember that all the methods and software that you use are just tools that happen to work right now, today. But, as search engine technology changes and as they seek to deliver better results to their audience, your job as a content producer will change too. However, if you’re providing the information and content your audience needs at the time when they need it, in the form that they need it, and that can also be understood by the search technology, you will succeed.

If you want your site and products to be one of the answers, you must be proactive about optimizing for voice search. These eight changes will make a big difference in whether you show up in voice search results or not.