The rise of omnipresent mobile phone digital assistants, home hubs, and car infotainment with voice commands can be an opportunity for you, the digital marketer. Considering voice search in your optimization efforts is one way that you can leap frog your competition for certain keywords and concepts.

Typical SEO optimization would focus on a keyword (or key phrase) and make sure to use that keyword multiple times in key areas – titles, headers, image alt text, body copy, etc. When you are optimizing instead for voice search, the game changes a little bit.

Think about things you would typically use voice search for:

• Where is the closest pizza restaurant that’s open now?
• How tall is Mount Everest?
• What year was President Biden born?

Each of these has two things in common. First, they all use natural language to present the question. Instead of a list of keywords and facts, they use full English sentences that the context must be derived from. Second, they all have a definite answer. Rarely if ever would you use voice search for more esoteric search queries. “Hey Google, explain the theory of relativity.” (I don’t think so.)

Knowing these two aspects of a good voice query will help you optimize your content to take advantage. You want to be first on Google, but you would also like to be presented as a knowledge tile. Those are more likely to be read out loud as the response to a voice query. So follow the two characteristics of a good voice query:

1. Instead of peppering your content with a target keyword, instead use full length natural language questions as titles and headers.
2. Give a definitive answer boldly within the text – probably as a numbered list or otherwise offset.
3. Monitor your search performance in Google Search Console to see if you are being presented as a knowledge tile. This lends itself to a good chance you are the voice search response.