Are you using voice search on your phone or at home? Did you optimize your website for voice search as well?

Finding your loud voice is really important as a business. As voice recognition continues to grow exponentially, businesses need to be optimized for voice search. Ensuring that you are ready needs to be prioritised so that you are not left behind. Your business needs to be found, and voice search is an increasing requirement as part of overall SEO.

Smart speakers are becoming more ubiquitous, as more households are using smart voice search devices such as

voice search smart speaker

 

 

 

And with more people working from home their use has naturally increased. If you are not voice search ready, here are a few stats, to encourage you to start getting ready.

  • 27% of the online global population is using voice search on mobile (source: Google)
  • 20% of all internet searches are voice based (source: techjury)
  • 40% of adults use a voice based search daily (source: techjury)
  • 52% or smart speaker owners keep them in their living room (source: Google)
  • 62% of those who regularly use a voice-activated speaker say they will buy something in the next month (source: Google)
  • 72% of people who own voice-activated speakers say that their devices are used as part of their daily routine (source: Google)

The importance of voice search

Voice assistants help consumers carry out commands, using natural language for searching the web, and control smart home devices and activate music.

As consumers we can see significant advantage and ease of accessing information, queries and commands using voice. “whats the weather in London”, “play favourite play list”, “switch on heating”. These voice interfaces, apps and commands offer huge untapped potential and also significant challenges for businesses who seek to deliver the right information to the right audience as well as a first-class, personalized brand experiences.

As those numbers show, voice search is on the rise, which means you need a strategy for voice search and SEO. There will be some early advantages as some businesses will be slow to adopt and that means your business is more likely to be found above your competitors.

It’s important to act fast, to gain an early mover advantage. This also helps with local searches as according to Google, searches for “near me” businesses have increased dramatically over the past few years, which is great news for local businesses.

  • 58% of consumers took advantage of voice search to find local business information (source: techJury)
  • 28% of people contact the business after doing a voice search (source: techjury)

Staying ahead 

Smart technology is changing fast, with constant improvements which means it can be a little challenging to keep track and adapt. These smart technologies are also changing consumers behaviour which means you need to adapt to your audience and give your audience the means to find you and your website using voice.

Voice assistant technology continues to be refined and improved to be more effective and personalized to users’ needs. If you want your website to be ready for voice search and ensure you get visitors from organic search results, you need to understand more about how people use the new technology when they research using voice rather than text.

Things are different when we speak

 

When we search using text, we tend to eliminate unrelated or connector words and thus text searches are shorter. When we speak this doesn’t happen, we tend to be more natural and conversational. We speak as we would to another person, which tends to increase the words and phrases used.

This means orientating your content in a conversational way. Understand how prospects or customers are likely to search for the items they want. Think about how you would do that. And the different ways someone might ask for the same product or service.

People want fast results, the need for immediacy. Customers don’t want to waste time typing, when they are a personal robot assistant that’s easy to access. Remember the earlier statistic 72% of people who own a voice-activated speaker use it as part of their daily routine.

Preparing for voice search

Here are some ideas and suggestion to help you prepare.

Update your content

The more content you have on your company website, that’s optimized for the way people will ask queries, the more you will appear at the top of the results. This is also true for test SEO.

Voice search pulls from rich snippets, so create an FAQ page on your website. As mentioned earlier there is a significant difference between voice and text search. Provide answers to common questions related to your industry, your product, your service and prospect and customer questions as they are spoken verbally.

Understand your audience

This may seem obvious, but there are nuances in how people speak, which you need to understand about your audience. Gaining a deep understanding of your target audience is key.

Your content should answer ‘why’, ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘how’ questions. When answering, keep the answers concise and direct, whilst making them conversational.

Website speed

This doesn’t solely relate to voice search as this relates to text search too. Google favours websites that load quickly both to desktop and mobile, but you should think mobile-first. Websites that load faster, will feature higher on search results.

Create a mix of long and short form content

Whilst longer content is important if you want to gain influence, short form content such as blogs will help you to attract people who are searching for quick and short answers to some of their questions.

Use simple words and short sentences

Generally, people using voice search are asking simple questions, using straightforward and natural language. The AI technology being used to understand and translated questions, will respond faster. Provide valuable and concise information, using words and language that are simple to understand you will increase your chances of being

Conclusion

Voice search is here to stay. Its not a trend that will vanish, which means you need to adapt. As more consumers use voice activated technology and smart speakers to search you will see a reducing number of searches using text. That means its essential that your website is optimised for both text and voice search.