Voice engine optimization (VEO) is Chatmeter's trademarked term for voice-based search engine optimization. VEO entails optimizing your content, location, and brand information to increase your likelihood of powering voice search results.
Here are ways on how to optimize a website for voice search:
1. Implement the Schema Markup
Schema markup, also known as structured data, is one of the factors that would make your website ready for voice search. It does not affect the rankings directly, but it can give you an edge over your competitors.
Essentially, it is the metadata; the data about the information on your site. It goes into your site’s source code. The visitors do not see it, but microdata helps search engines to organize and classify your content. It is an underutilized strategy because it requires work.
How is microdata relevant to voice search?
When users search for local businesses, they often look for operational hours, contact information, address, directions from highways, and the like.
You can use microdata to ensure that search engines classify this information.
Here is a sample markup that classifies your contact details page as containing contact information.
You can also use schema to enable search enhancements and get a visually appealing result on search engine results page (SERP).
For example, look below at the recipe page result with star ratings, details about the number of calories, and cooking time.
Lastly, ensure that your structured data pages are not blocked using robots.txt and other control methods.
Businesses can experience a drop in traffic and disappearance from rankings due to a minor change in the robots.txt directives.
If you’re using WordPress, the easiest way to use schema, by far, is to use the Schema Creator plugin by Raven.
2. Brand Local - Claim your Business with Google My Business
Voice search sees a high number of hyper-local queries.
Want an easy way to help your customers find you?
Share your business information in your site’s footer in simple text format. That is where users are accustomed to seeing it.
There are two ways in which a user might search for local businesses.
1. “Pizza delivery in Los Angeles” — In such cases, if you have optimized your site for local keywords, then you have a chance to appear higher in search results.
2. “Pizza delivery near me” — For such questions, Google relies on the user’s location and turns toward Google My Business listings.
That is why it is important to claim your Google My Business listing.
In the listing, ensure that your name, address, and phone number (NAP) are accurate.
The phone number should ideally contain the area code. Further, I recommend using your business domain for your Google My Business login as opposed to a free Gmail account.
The introduction field is your business pitch. You should beef it up with about 400 words to describe your products and services.
It is also important to associate your listing with relevant categories. Google wants you to use categories to “describe what your business is.”
Choosing the right category is important. It can mean the difference between appearing at the top vs. disappearing from the voice search results.
Ideally, you should upload a few high-quality pictures of your business to persuade your prospects to visit your store.
If you are filling out your NAP information in other business directories, then you need to stay consistent.
Even slight differences in your address or other business information can be detrimental to your local SEO.
An Internet Trends Report found that more than one in five voice queries focus on finding something local, so include keywords and phrases of local significance on your site. Think landmarks, descriptors of your town, and using the term “near me” in title tags, anchor text, internal links and meta description.
3. Make your Website Mobile-friendly
Voice search mainly happens on mobile devices. It is obvious that your site has to be mobile-friendly.
Google recommends a responsive web design. Most WordPress themes are inherently so.
Test your website if it complies with Google's guidelines using Google's Mobile-friendly Test tool.
If everything is fine, you will get a message that says, “Page is mobile-friendly.”
Also, an effective content strategy for mobile is that you need to leave a lot of white space, use short sentences, choose simple words, small paragraphs, and engaging subheadings.
4. Create Posts Answering your Customers’ Questions
You need to optimize for voice search through featured snippets.
The best way to go about this is to answer specific questions related to your service, product or brand.
Take the time to hear your audience and understand how your customers are asking about products within your industry.
People speak different keywords than the ones they type in search engines to refer to your products, services, and business.
You need to carefully listen to the words people use when talking about you.
Once you have collected their common questions and phrases, you can create content for them.
I recommend creating dedicated blog posts based on your customers’ questions.
You can also optimize the existing content on your blog and product pages for these queries.
Finding the questions of your audience and answering them through blog posts will not help with voice search alone.
If you are not aware of how your customers describe your product, then you might be missing critical business insights.
Long-Tail keywords will increase in importance. Voice search uses more conversational tones, and you need to optimize for long-tail keywords and phrases. Most search queries on voice search are question-based keywords.
Answer those questions properly and you will be well on your way to SERPS success. And by doing so, you will have a better chance of appearing in a voice search result.
5. Improve the Page Speed of your Website
Google gives special priority in voice searches to sites that load quickly, so make sure your site’s download speed is fast.
Google Insights can help with the load time of your website. A service like this can help with load time insights and improvement.
Also, if you want to find out what exact elements are slowing down your site, plug it into Webpagetest.org.
6. Submit a Detailed Sitemap to Google
Google supports extended sitemap syntax for the following media types. Use extensions to describe video files, images, and other hard-to-parse content on your site to improve indexing.
Read more info from Google Support:
Build and Submit a Sitemap
Create a Google News Sitemap
Image Sitemaps
Video Sitemaps and Video Sitemap alternatives
Voice Search Is Changing the Online Shopping Industry
The continued rise of companies such as Amazon, Etsy and other e-commerce websites shows that consumers' appetite for online shopping is not going away. People love to view their options and make purchases without ever having to set foot in a store.
However, the rise of voice search and voice-activated devices may be changing the way people do their shopping online. More people than ever before are using voice-activated devices and digital assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
That is why it is very important for ecommerce websites to start having the voice engine optimization strategy. Once you define your strategy, you should work on building a keyword list specific to voice search.
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