Voice Search Optimisation when Designing a WordPress Site
When you think about WordPress design, you probably think about colour palettes and creative templates .
You might not think about voice search optimisation, which is quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing facets of web design .
Though WordPress is geared toward those who want to put together impressive visual designs, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t at least be thinking about the issue of voice search optimisation when you add content to an otherwise blank page.
In doing so, you might be able to attract a clientele that you may not even realise exists.
Nearly 20 per cent of tablet users have voice search enabled on their devices, and countless more are looking for information through their smart speakers.
By getting them to visit your WordPress site this way, you’re significantly increasing the chances that they’ll do so with a proper desktop browser later on.
Framing Your Content Around Voice Searches

Dense titles that explain exactly what a post will be about can help voice search systems lock onto anything you put on your blog.
Though you may find your words scrolling off the side when working with WordPress’s default interface, there aren’t any limitations when writing a title.
Though long permalinks might seem a little obtuse, they can be helpful in this case.
Posting videos and other rich content is always a good idea, but don’t forget to provide text descriptions for everything you put up.
You can’t expect even the most skilful AI to watch your videos, after all.
No matter how much technology changes, content is still king, so you want to ensure that every single post you put on your WordPress blog is phrased helpfully.
Consider answering legitimate questions that you expect users to have about a topic naturally.
FAQ sheets are always a good idea, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do longer in-depth pieces as well.
Eventually, you’ll need to audit your blog and see if it’s hitting all of these voice search-related points.
Automating the Voice Search Optimisation Process

More prominent blogs and eCommerce sites will want to invest in a plugin to check their material and point out areas that a voice search bot couldn’t reach.
Some of the best WordPress plugins in the space are pretty simple, so don’t feel that you need to get something extremely sophisticated.
Using conversational language should also help, so see if you can find a grammar app that points out anything in your prose that seems a little unusual.
Too much stilted text will screw up voice search applications, so it’s essential to avoid this.
Remember that voice searchers almost always phrase their queries as questions, so you’ll want to consider adding these as subheadings throughout your blog posts.
WordPress accepts h2 tags, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty adding plenty of these.
Consider using analytic data processing software to learn more about your target audience and how they use their devices.
More than likely, the most significant percentage of voice search users will either be accessing your WordPress site through mobile devices or smart speakers, so any material geared toward them can be text-heavy.
If you find that a healthy number is logging on through, say, macOS using Siri integration, then feel free to add some extra content by embedding some social videos into your WordPress post.
You’re probably already adding Schema Markup tags and meta description fields into each post you’re making. Those who haven’t will want to start.
Assuming that you have, though, you’ll need to revise the way you write them.
Try adding a call to action in each meta description, which will force Alexa or Pixel voices to deliver said call to every single person who ever visits your site over their speakers.
Working with Other Content Management Systems

Nearly all of this advice is every bit as useful for Joomla users as it is for those who exclusively use WordPress.
Creative web designers working exclusively with raw HTML, CSS and PHP will also want to incorporate these voice search optimisation techniques during the design phase.
Since they’re closer to the underlying technologies and can add extra tags whenever they want, it may even be easier to do things this way.
HTML image tags, for instance, allow developers to specify a small amount of alternative text that can help individuals using screen readers to navigate a page.
Since voice search algorithms turn to every last bit of text they can find, filling out these descriptions might be very useful.
Some people have opined that they might even aid those trying to rank on traditional search engines .
Whenever you post a PDF document or other file, make sure that the words are set as text and not pictures of glyphs.
This will help reduce their size and give voice search systems the freedom to index them regardless of whether you’re using WordPress or another content management system.
What are your thoughts on voice search optimisation? Does it help – leave a comment below.
Really helpful content. Thanks for the info.