Voice Search in Web Development
Date: 6/21/2021

For web developers, it is crucial to understand new and upcoming trends and focus on significant technologies that constitute the new norma. This can go a long way in crafting long-term strategy and making businesses future-proof.

One such trend that is sure to dominate the workflow of web developers is the implementation of voice search in web development.

In recent times, there has been a significant increase in the overall number of voice search queries. More and more people are using the voice search feature in search engines as well as smart assistants to carry out searches. In these circumstances, reports indicate that optimizing for voice search is one of the fastest-growing trends in web development. Some surveys indicate that more than 40% of surveyed users prefer using voice search due to the convenience and ease it provides.

Keeping this in mind, here are some of the most important things you can do to optimize your website for voice search.

Speed and Mobile Optimization

The first crucial task is to optimize your website’s loading speed. When faced with multiple sites having similar content, search engines like Google prioritize the fastest-loading one. This means that you can lose out on voice search traffic if your website is slower than the competition.

Similarly, making your website mobile-friendly can provide tremendous benefits, with over half of the search queries in the world currently coming from mobile devices. Having a site responsible for mobile use increases the likelihood of your website being featured in mobile voice search results.

Content Optimization

Building authority and scoring SEO points can be essential if you want your website to figure prominently in voice search results. Several content optimizations can be made to facilitate this. The first is to feature plentiful amounts of well-written long-form content on your website. Relevant content that is simply written and detailed can do wonders for SEO.

Similarly, it’s critical to structure your content properly to make it more optimized for voice search results. To accomplish this, your content needs to be easily scannable and simple to read and understand. Optimize your content with headings, subheadings, simple, short sentences, and small paragraphs to take advantage of this.

Using Schema Metadata

According to the latest best practices information, using schema metadata can make a difference to your SEO. This also holds true for optimizing your website for voice search queries. Write schema metadata for your website gives search engines a better understanding of its contents thereby increasing visibility and having a much better chance of appearing in voice search results.

Conversational Filler Words Optimization

This is a crucial part of optimizing your website for voice search. Speech queries are mostly conversational and optimizing for spoken rather than written keywords can elevate your website in voice search results. When doing keyword optimization, it’s a poignant idea to take your key phrases and dilute them with conversational filler words like a, the, me, for, etc.

FAQ Section

It is natural that voice search queries would frequently return results from the FAQ section of a website, as that section is tailored to provide quick, conversational answers. Create a detailed FAQ section with conversational queries and answers and your website can feature more prominently in voice search queries.

Keeping in mind the importance of voice search in web development, these are some of the steps you can implement to elevate your worth as a web designer in the new normal. For the world’s sake – hopefully this new normal changes in a couple of years though!