Before, you were able to reach the traffic you need through optimizing your website for text queries and searches. Now, things have become much more complicated. A lot of people do not even type anymore. All you have to do to search for something in 2022 is grab your phone and ask the phone your questions using your voice and the magic technology will just give you the answer you seek.
In order to reach out to those people and make sure your affiliate website gets enough attention, you need to optimize your website for voice search. In this article, we will explain why and how you can achieve this on your website.
Do People Actually Use Voice Search?
At this very moment, lots of people are using their smartphones for searching their queries with their voice. According to Google, 27% of people online are using voice search.
Out of these people, 60% of them have contacted a business directly from the results of their voice search. This number is increasing day by day. So you need to know what kind of atmosphere you should be expecting in the very near future.
In this day and age, people need to get to their needs faster, and what is faster than searching something with your voice and clicking on the first website on the results page? You want to be that website, trust me.
Differences Between Voice Search and Text Search
When you are searching for something using text, you tend to type in the keywords and omit words like How or What. While voice searches tend to be more conversational, consisting of a full sentence. Compare the two search queries below. The first one is a text search, and the second one is a voice search.
As you can see there are 5 million results for that query, consisting only of keywords.
This one, however, has 14 million results and seems to answer the question much better. This is while both queries included the phrase "caffeinated coffee" and "decaf coffee."
You need to optimize your affiliate website for both types of search since using the strategy used for one of them will not be helpful for the other type. If you were only using the strategy for text-based searches so far, you need to start using the strategies for optimizing your website for voice search.
Strategies for Voice Search Optimization
If you have paid attention to the pictures above, you have seen those information boxes that contain all the details that the user needs. Therefore the user might not even need to scroll down. Being in that place means your website is in the "position zero." That information box is called a "featured snippet." So if you want your website to receive lots of organic traffic for specific keywords, you should get to the position zero. There are a lot of things you can do to reach that stage. The rules are kind of similar to text-based SEO.
- Make your website mobile-friendly: First things first. The most important thing you should do is make your website mobile-friendly. We all know that most of the voice searches are done on mobile phones, so if your website is not mobile-friendly yet, do not even proceed. If you are using WordPress, your website is probably already optimized for mobile and tablet users. However, if you want to check if your website is doing fine on that aspect, you can visit Google’s Mobile Friendly Test page and make sure. When you got that fixed, move on to the next steps.
- Use Long-tail Keywords: As we have mentioned before in this article, your ticket to position zero would be investing in long-tail keywords. For example, instead of including "best coffee," write "best coffee ground for cold brew in 2022." Voice search uses long-tail keywords and sentences. Try to narrow the services of your website down, so people know you are the one website that offers that service or information.
- Write easy-to-read content: In this day and age, the easier your content is, the more people are going to understand it. People do not care if you are using academic or literary words. If you want to be at the position zero of Google search results, make your content so easy-to-read that an 8-year-old can understand it. It should be straightforward and make sense.
- Include question words: As we have mentioned before, voice searches mostly include words like "how", "when", "where", "why", and "what". You want to include that in the SEO of your website. Keep your keywords, but also add those question words just to make sure people who search with their voice can get to you easily.
- Optimize your website for local searches: People tend to use voice search for services related to their lives or the place they live in. If you target your keywords for the area that you offer your services, you can expect more traffic very soon.
- Increase your Page Loading Speed: This is not limited to voice search. If you want more organic traffic, it is an established fact that your website has to load faster. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights. When you get your reports, try to fix the issues by searching on the internet for their solutions. If you are using WordPress, there are plugins such as Hummingbird that help you improve the performance of your website.
Summary
Soon, most of the users will be using their smartphones to search for their needs and if you want to have your affiliate business fruitful and successful, you need to keep your website up-to-date with the newest technologies. A lot of businesses have already optimized their websites for voice search. It is high time you joined them and attracted even more traffic. Remember, your website needs to be mobile-friendly and be optimized for long-tail keywords as the most important rules.
