Voice search, which, by some esti­mates, will account for half of all search­es by 2020, is still some­what new – Alexa, after all, didn’t come out until 2015 – and so opti­miza­tion tips remain some­what lim­it­ed.

In fact, at a recent event, SEOs’ best advice was to cre­ate con­tent that earns a fea­tured snip­pet.

That’s not to say this isn’t valu­able feed­back as Alexa, Siri and Google pull quick answers from posi­tion zero, said Casey Mar­kee, founder dig­i­tal agency Media Wyse. And, in turn, that means brands look­ing to reach con­sumers hear­ing ver­bal answers from their assis­tants must learn to answer ques­tions sim­ply (and to per­haps con­sult Markee’s guide on How to Opti­mize for Posi­tion Zero.

Damon Gochneaur, founder of dig­i­tal agency Aspiro Agency, said he thinks fea­tured snip­pets will con­tin­ue to dri­ve most answers for Google-relat­ed devices, but search­es on Ama­zon hold oppor­tu­ni­ty for savvy mar­keters “as their infor­ma­tion sourc­ing is still imma­ture com­pared to the com­peti­tor device net­works.”

And, as voice usage grows, what else can brands/marketers do to be found?

Anna Lebe­de­va, head of media rela­tions at com­pet­i­tive intel­li­gence suite SEM­rush, said voice search is actu­al­ly pret­ty straight­for­ward and requires less tech-savvi­ness than opti­miza­tion of yore.

“It can be con­sid­ered as an exten­sion of the trend towards the human­iza­tion of the web expe­ri­ence,” she said. “By and large, the days when your job was to appeal to the algo­rith­mic bot are com­ing to an end. From now on, you are pleas­ing the bot once your users are pleased with the kind of expe­ri­ence you pro­vide.”

In oth­er words, she said voice search is “mere­ly a man­i­fes­ta­tion of all the oth­er trends that have been going on for a while now — local­iza­tion, per­son­al­iza­tion, human­iza­tion [and] intent ori­en­ta­tion.”

She argues voice search makes opti­miza­tion – and the entire web expe­ri­ence – more intu­itive and nat­ur­al and sim­ply requires a slight shift in the way we think about opti­miza­tion.

Here’s what that includes:

1. Optimize for questions.

Con­sumers have ques­tions. That’s poten­tial­ly why they are using voice search. And that means mar­keters should opti­mize their con­tent for ques­tion-spe­cif­ic search­es, Mar­kee said.

“That means who, what, when, where, why and how phras­es. Doing so means min­ing your cus­tomers for data as well as putting up detailed FAQ con­tent based around your prod­uct and ser­vices,” he added.

To help find ques­tion-spe­cif­ic search­es, Mar­kee rec­om­mend­ed using tools like Answer the Pub­lic, Keyword.io, Buz­zsumo Ques­tion Ana­lyz­er, Quo­ra, Google search­es and your own Google Search Con­sole Search Queries report data.

In addi­tion, Lebe­de­va said to make sure Q&A con­tent is at the top of the page and ide­al­ly includes answers in the first sen­tence.

“You know your product/service inside out, but peo­ple often don’t, and it is your job to help them real­ize all the oppor­tu­ni­ties your product/service opens up to your cus­tomers,” Lebe­de­va added.

2. Experiment with voice assistants.

It’s also hard to opti­mize for devices and/or assis­tants you’ve nev­er used, so Jason Bau­man, senior SEO asso­ciate at opti­miza­tion agency Trin­i­ty Insight, rec­om­mend­ed invest­ing in Google Home and Echo devices and using them in addi­tion to Cor­tana and Siri.

“See how they answer,” he said. “Ask your ques­tion a few dif­fer­ent ways to see how mod­i­fiers change the answers you get. Voice search is all about opti­miz­ing around how your cus­tomers look for infor­ma­tion. When you ask Alexa or Google a ques­tion, you know the type of answer you want.”

Because voice assis­tants build their answers based on actu­al search­es, brands that don’t receive answers they expect should con­sid­er whether con­sumers are using dif­fer­ent words or phras­es – and amend their con­tent accord­ing­ly.

“If your web­site does not offer the answers voice assis­tants pro­vide, see how you can inte­grate them,” he added.

3. Address local intent.

Mar­kee not­ed voice search queries are 3x more like­ly to have local intent, so “as a mar­keter, that’s where I would be putting my focus.”

Indi­vid­ual loca­tions can tap into these so-called “near me” queries in part by ensur­ing the infor­ma­tion in their Google My Busi­ness list­ings is up to date, as well as writ­ing with local intent to cap­ture the atten­tion of local con­sumers, Lebe­de­va said.

Bau­man agreed this is the kind of infor­ma­tion con­sumers often want to know about com­pa­nies and “keep­ing this list­ing up to date will make it more like­ly that Google will have an answer to ques­tions relat­ed to it.

Brands can also opti­mize their ads for voice search in part by uti­liz­ing AdWords loca­tion exten­sions and using Google Maps Local Search Ads.

4. Use schema.

Using schema and struc­tured data, which help search engines fig­ure out what is on a giv­en page, allows machine learn­ing algo­rithms to eas­i­ly access to your data, Mar­kee said.
That means mark­ing up for Google’s Knowl­edge Graph and learn­ing to opti­mize using the pend­ing Speak­able markup from Schema.org, which indi­cates sec­tions of a page that are par­tic­u­lar­ly appro­pri­ate for text-to-speech con­ver­sion and is pro­ject­ed to poten­tial­ly be released by the end of 2017, he added.

Bau­man agreed hav­ing details like the col­or, price or quan­ti­ty of items you’re sell­ing marked up in schema can improve the chance crawlers will find it.

“I think struc­tured data will con­tin­ue to play a huge role in allow­ing search engines and voice engines to con­tex­tu­al­ly and seman­ti­cal­ly under­stand our sites’ con­tent,” Gochneaur added.

5. Remember SEO best practices.

And, of course, don’t for­get the basics.

“Make it easy for Google and users to find your con­tent on desk­top and mobile,” Mar­kee said. “Focus on page speed, HTTPS, opti­mized con­tent with a con­ver­sa­tion­al focus, links to that con­tent, struc­tured data and, most impor­tant­ly, mobile-friend­li­ness to take advan­tage of the pend­ing mobile-first index.”

6. Create audio answers.

Anoth­er way might be to also cre­ate your own audio respons­es to ques­tions your audi­ences have.

That’s accord­ing to David Erick­son, con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gist at Kar­wos­ki & Courage Pub­lic Rela­tions, who point­ed to Google Home, which uses its algo­rithms to find the right answers to voice queries and then uses text-to-speech tech­nol­o­gy to read it.

“Google’s modus operan­di in search has always been to deliv­er the best pos­si­ble result for any giv­en query. Would­n’t, then, a bet­ter result from a Google Home query be the appro­pri­ate response from an actu­al human’s voice rather than Google’s text-to-speech response?” he asked. “And what if that response came from a rec­og­nized expert on the top­ic of the query? Fol­low­ing that log­ic, then, one thing I would be doing is record­ing audio answers to your audi­ence’s like­ly ques­tions and incor­po­rat­ing them into your efforts at opti­miz­ing for fea­tured snip­pets.”

On the Ama­zon Echo, for exam­ple, brands could poten­tial­ly pub­lish audio books on Ama­zon that include answers to their audi­ences’ ques­tions, he added.