How to Optimize Content for Voice Search: 9 Ways to Refine Your On-SERP SEO Skills

This can be a challenging topic to learn about because several of the main ideas overlap.

First, you’ve got voice search. Easy enough. Most people get that. 

But early in any discussion about voice search, you’re going to run into terms like “on-SERP SEO,” “featured snippets,” and “SERP Position Zero.”

What does it all mean?

To sort it out, we’ll aim to provide useful context for these terms and offer  ideas on how to optimize content for voice search.

As you know, most people are pretty attached to their mobile devices. 

And every day, more people get accustomed to using their voices to set commands, ask questions, and search for products. 

In nearly every article about voice search, there’s a statistic cited claiming that by the year 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice-based.

While we don’t believe that’s come to pass, it may not be long before it does. 

For more reliable stats, look to what’s happening with Millennials and Generation-Z. After all, they grew up with technology all around them, aren’t afraid to use it, and their behaviors will increasingly shape search trends. 45% of millennials use voice assistants while shopping¹ and 20% of mobile searches are made with voice control features.²

Though far from perfect, voice interfaces have improved to a point where consumers now use them regularly. When you factor the increasing popularity of Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple’s Siri, the use of voice search is bound to grow.³

“So, Alexa, how should B2B marketers optimize content for voice search?”

Apply a conversational tone to your content. “If you aren’t reading your own writing out loud, Google’s going to do it for you, and you’d better make sure the results are good enough to drive interaction or conversion.”⁴ –The Drum

“But Siri, what’s the difference between text search and voice search?”

Text searches tend to be one to three words long – while the average voice search comes in around double that length. And most voice searches are phrased like questions.

When you consider how the AI has been improving for both conversational chatbots and voice responsive devices like smartphones and Amazon Echo, the task of optimizing your content for voice search seems inevitable.

Aspire to Achieve SERP Position Zero

Remember when the primary SEO goal was for your content to be recommended on page one of Google Search results?

Seems quaint now, doesn’t it?

Now your mission is to secure SERP Position Zero. And in this case, zero is more valuable than one. 

Why? Two reasons:

1. Achieving SERP Position Zero in browser based search results will also often reveal a featured snippet.

You’ve probably seen these featured snippets appear at the top of your search results for the past few years now. The potential to garner both increased brand awareness and website visits should grow by an order of magnitude based on earning this coveted spot.

2. Achieving SERP Position Zero in voice search results for a given SEO keyword means that your “answer” becomes the response that’s read back to the searcher.

Can you imagine how important this will become? “Even if you’re dominating the search results for the entire first page, a competitor with the zero spot is going to soak up 100% of the voice search traffic and leave your hard-fought position one content starved for clicks.”⁵ –The Drum

Refine Your On-SERP SEO Skills

How do you achieve SERP Position Zero? The practice is known as “On-SERP SEO.” And, though it deserves more guidance than we can provide in one blog post, here are some recommendations:⁶

1. Conduct a content audit and consistently optimize your posts.
2. Produce the highest quality content you can for your most important topics.
3. Include the keyword you are optimizing for.
4. Provide answers to the five W’s (who, what, when, where, why) for the specific topics you want to rank for.
5. Use a conversational tone.
6. Test and refine content to improve results.
7. Limit paragraphs to 50 words or less.
8. Use simple, consistent HTML code.
9. Apply clean formatting to content headers.

Summary & Takeaways

When you factor the growing popularity of devices like Alexa and Google Home, it will increasingly pay to optimize content for voice search. You’ll need to decide how much time you can really invest in optimizing your content for on-SERP voice search. But, the ability to rank above number one in Google results, along with the opportunity to provide a featured snippet of content is a powerful way to improve your lead-related metrics.

If you can select long-tail keywords that also line up with how people are likely to search by voice, you might position your content to rank increasingly well going forward.

Sources include:
1. “Voice Shopping Consumer Adoption Report 2018,” Voicebot.ai, 2018
2. “Mobile Marketing Trends and Stats Marketers Should Follow in 2020,” Therese Palmere, Aumcore.com, January 2020
3. “2019 Content Marketing Strategy: Here Are 5 Content Marketing Trends That You Can’t Ignore This Year,” Lilach Bullock, January 2019
4. “It’s not about length: SEO content trends to stay ahead of in 2020,” Paul Melismas, The Drum, October 2019
5. “It’s not about length: SEO content trends to stay ahead of in 2020,” Paul Melismas, The Drum, October 2019
6. “4 Major Marketing Trends for 2020 and Beyond,” Alp Mimaroglu, Entrepreneur Magazine, May 2019