Nowadays, mobile phones are the way to access content online. Computer use has declined constantly in the last few years, and that trend is not likely to reverse anytime soon. With the popularity of phones at an all-time high, it's no wonder that voice search is gaining popularity.
Voice search is that popular because of the prevalence of smart devices like speakers, phones, earbuds, tablets, tvs and many other things that use AI assistants like Alexa, Google, Siri, GPT, and many more.
With all of this popularity, it's no wonder that a lot of affiliates try to optimize their content for voice search as well! If you aren't even considering it, then you might be missing out on a lot of potential traffic!
Why Optimize For Voice Search?
Voice search is convenient, fast, and popular. Most of the users are younger people, though it has started gaining traction with older folks as well. The queries that users search for are different than ones they search for on their devices.
When speaking with devices, people tend to make longer queries that are more detailed and more conversational. This means that if you optimize for regular queries, you might not rank well with voice, and the other way around.
If you want to optimize your content for voice searches, you need to work on it, as it takes some effort. But if you manage to do it, you can expect more high-quality traffic, intent-rich traffic, and a boost to your conversions.
Other affiliates are doing it as well, so if you don',t you are likely missing out on at least some opportunities!
How To Optimize For Voice Search?
Optimizing for voice search is not that different from any other type of SEO. You need to find the right keywords, create content around them, and make everything load fast and give the users what they want.
Here are some ways you can optimize your content for voice queries!
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Conversational Keywords and Natural Language
When users do voice search, they usually talk to their devices like they would to another human. The tone is conversational, the queries are a bit more detailed, and they use full sentences rather than just a few keywords.
Instead of let’s say, “best fitness tracker”, people would search for “What is the best fitness tracker for tracking running?”
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Long-Tail Keywords
All of this extra stuff is something you need to pay attention to. As you can see most of the queries will likely include some long-tail keywords. This is a double edged sword.
On one hand, you will have way less competition if you pick your keywords right, but on the other, you need to make sure that your long-tail keyword is something that users are actually searching for.
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Natural Speech
For this reason, you should try to focus on using natural speech and avoid using overly technical language or jargon that might not be used with voice search in general.
To get a better idea of what to use, you can also utilize tools like Google keyword planner, Ahrefs, and others. Try to find conversational queries that align with your niche.
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Optimize Your Content
Voice search prioritizes fresh and up to date content. This means that if you host a page that has info that is likely to change over time, you should stay on top of it and update it as regularly as you can.
You need to stay current and the content that is hosted should make sense and is correct. Otherwise you will get ignored by most good search engines.
But being up to date isn't the only thing that you should pay attention to. With voice search, search engines often pull out data a bit differently than they do for regular queries.
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FAQ Content
One thing they prioritize is FAQ content and featured snippets.
For FAQ content, you should make well organized and clear common questions with quality answers that can be summarized in a few short sentences. Try going for simple answers as the engines will try to simplify it even further, and some info might be lost there.
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Featured Snippets
You should also optimize your content so that it appears in featured snippets. This not only improves your overal search engine rankings, it will also sometimes put you in a “position zero” on search results. Which means that you will appear in the featured snippet thats in front of even the sponsored links.
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SEO and Page Optimizations
Affiliates often forget just how important SEO and Optimizations are, but we are here to remind you just in case!
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Page Optimization
The first thing you should do is optimize your content and page for a mobile first experience. This means a bit bigger fonts, less clutter, and big images and headlines that make everything easy to glance at.
One of the biggest factors is how fast a page loads. Not only will search engines rank you worse if your page loads slowly, but users will also often just decide to quit your page if it doesn't open fast enough for them.
They are on their phones after all, and attention spans are quite low there. You can get a better idea how your page performs by using tools like Googles PageSpeed Insights, or GTmetrics to identify and fix issues.
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SEO
You shouldn't forget about SEO even if its for voice search! The right changes can make a huge difference in your positioning for regular searches and how often you are mentioned in voice search results.
You should also make sure that your SEO includes some local queries. When searching, people often add near me, or location specific searches. This also means that affiliates that target local or geo specific niches must optimize their content accordingly.
This also extends to your often overlooked, but important meta descriptions and titles. Writing clear and concise descriptions and tags can help make your content more visible to web crawlers. While this has been depreoritized with updates in the last few years, its still something you shouldnt forget completely about.
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Use Schema Markup
Structured data (often called schema markup) helps search engines understand your content better and boost its visibility in voice results. With a few fixes here and there, you can improve both your ranking and your traffic and conversion rate.
You can use tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or other apps that can help you implement it on your affiliate site. If you do it right, you should see better results right away.
Conclusion
Optimizing your content for voice search is not optional anymore, it's required if you want to see the best results and stay competitive. As more and more search queries go through voice or AI assistants, this is likely to become more important and more valuable in the future.
Focusing on the basics is the priority, and after you are done with them, you should try optimizing even further for better results. This means focusing on conversational keywords, improving mobile experience, and making content that makes sense for voice queries should be your priority.
Just with a few small changes, you can already be a step or two ahead of your competitors, and that's without doing anything special on top of it! To get the best high-quality voice-driven traffic and increase conversions further, you should also do the things we mentioned earlier.
The sooner you start implementing and optimizing for it, the sooner you will see results!
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