As the proliferation of mobile devices continues to grow, so does the nuance necessary for the most precise search results to be delivered to users. With more people using mobile devices to search for things than standard desktop and laptop devices, it should surprise nobody that search engines are building their algorithms increasingly around mobile users.

While most mobile users still rely on traditional forms of input, voice search is growing exponentially with each passing. Those brands seeking to optimize their performance in search results already know how important mobile SEO is, but optimizing your content and pages for voice searches specifically is an entirely different worry.

Let’s examine how you can better optimize your SEO for searches in the here and now.

Make Your Site Fast

It should go without saying, but people love fast websites. This is true enough that even search engines have taken note, and there appears to be a strong correlation between how highly a page ranks in search and how quickly it loads. Since the vast majority of voice searches are coming through mobile devices, it only makes sense that page loading speed would be a priority.

By pinging to Google faster page loading times, you’ll likely begin seeing better rankings when coupled with a broader SEO strategy. Likewise, your audience will appreciate the faster loading times and you’ll lose fewer of them to your competitors, thereby lowering your bounce rate.

Make Your Site Secure

Most search engines have been prioritizing the rankings of websites with HTTPs for at least a couple of years, but this is especially true in voice searches. While only about half of the highest-ranked non-voice searches use HTTPs, roughly three in four via voice searches have this certificate.

What exactly is HTTPS? In short, it is a secure certificate that provides visitors with the reassurance that their data is not able to be intercepted in between them submitting it and you receiving it. Particularly important for online store-fronts, a HTTPS certificate is a must.

While historically these have cost money, most basic websites can use one of several services to receive free HTTPS protection – so there’s no excuse not to make this quick and easy upgrade.

Make It Short and Sweet

If you’re looking to improve your chances of ranking well in search engines, then knowing exactly how to target voice searches is a huge must.

As it turns out, the best way to improve SEO for voice is to keep your target phrases as short as possible. This seemingly conflicts somewhat with modern SEO recommendations, which suggests that long-tail keywords are the best targets from a realistic perspective. However, shorter voice queries are still usually a few words long, meaning you have plenty of opportunity to target relatively small niches and still dominate in voice search.

Targeting search results based on voice search is a smart long-term move. As more and more mobile devices become intuitive in this regard, more users will take advantage of the technology. There is no reason why you can’t dominate in both traditional text-based and voice-based searches by pinging to Google an all-encompassing SEO strategy. The advice above should help guide you in the right direction with respect to targeting the latter.