How to Optimize Your E-Commerce Site for Voice Search

Optimizing your e-commerce site for voice search is an imperative today. Most people are using their mobile devices to find the information and products they need to solve their problems. They often do it when they are on the go, so they’re usually ready to buy. If you have an e-commerce store, you’ll want to optimize your site to cater to voice search.

Mobile First

Your site should be optimized to work well on mobile before you worry about how it works on any type of PC. The good thing is, when you do that, it will work great on many types of browsers and devices, thus improving search results for all kinds of searches that your audience does.

Use Conversational and Natural Keywords

When people search using text, they tend to abbreviate their search input. But when they use voice, they tend to use more natural and conversational words in the form of a question. They might ask, for example, “What is the best dog breed when you have toddlers” whereas in text they might just look up “dog breed kids” as an abbreviated form of the search.

Use More Questions in Your Content

Because people tend to ask questions when using voice search, it’s important to phrase more of your content as questions that you answer. For example, use the question you’re responding to as the title to the blog post you write. This will help put it on the radar of the voice search engines.

Know the Relevant Trigger Words for Voice Search

Each audience will have different trigger words, so it’s imperative that you study this factor with your own audience. For example, with Google, the search says, “Ok Google or Hey Google,” so you may want to add those words to your content to show up more in the results. But there are also words like “what,” “best,” “where,” “how,” and “why” which you should use within your content.

Ensure Your Site Is Secure

You may not think it does, but the security of your site can affect voice search just like it can text search. If people including bots go to your website and it’s not secure, they’re going to jump off. Install HTTPS, and if you’re not sure how to do that, talk to your hosting company so they can help you. Even if your shopping cart itself is secure, you need to ensure the entire site is secure.

Quicken the Loading Speeds of Your Site’s Pages

A fast site-loading speed, less than three seconds, is imperative if you want to get more traffic with voice searches. People aren’t very patient when it comes to a slow loading site on their PC, but they’ll be even less patient with voice search on their mobile device because they usually want what they’re searching for now.

Use Structured Markup Data

You may need to use a plugin if you’re using self-hosted WordPress and you’re not a website developer. However, this is not difficult to do. Just download and install one of the many different plugins that assist with structured markup data, such as Schema & Structured Data for WP and AMP (https://wordpress.org/plugins/schema-and-structured-data-for-wp/).

Develop High-Quality Content

Of course, you also need top-notch, high-quality content that is focused on your buyer’s journey and user intent. Put the answers in front of your audience where they are, and they will find you.

As you see, most of the things you need to do in order to optimize for voice search on your e-commerce site are really just good SEO practices. The fact is, if you want to be found today you must think of mobile and voice first – before you think of anything else. The remarkable fact about that is that when you do, you are perfecting your site for all other types of search too.