Voice Search: Optimize Your Website for Stronger SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) evolves just as any other marketing subset does, and voice search is the latest step in that evolution. As SEO grew crucial for local businesses, voice capabilities tap into smart assistants like Siri and Alexa. These assistants then pull information from the search query based on website copy.
When a business optimizes copy for certain keywords, they increase their chances for showing up in that search result. Because local business’ typically lack the resources the industry behemoths do, selectively choosing the right wording goes a long way towards future-proofing your business.
What is Voice Search?
If you’ve ever said “Hey, Siri”, then you’ve conducted a voice search. This form of search employs voice-to-text capabilities in tandem with speech commands. Popularly used in smart assistant applications (Siri, Alexa, Google), users typically enable these searches from smart homes, tablets, and mobile devices. However, many desktop computers offer the same functionality in 2022.
Rapidly growing in popularity, 71% of consumers choose voice as their preferred search method. Additionally, 75% of households in the United States possess smart home devices. With smart technology directly driving these types of searches, the trend quickly developed into a new way of life.
3 SEO Strategies for Voice Search Optimization
Naturally, with the rise in the number of people using voice search, optimizing content for voice search dominates contemporary SEO initiatives. Typically, voice queries are shorter, more abrupt, and done in more full sentences, compared to text queries. With this in mind, voice takes on conversational dialogue, often incorporating modern slang.
Here are a few strategies commonly used to optimize websites for voice searching:
1. Optimize Your Local SEO
Some of the most common voice search queries are something like “What’s the best restaurant near me?” Localization is key for small businesses. Voice search made this even more of the standard. In fact, Google reports that “near me” searches grew 150% over the last two years.
A tactful way of tapping into this is to include your city/suburb in website copy. Also, many businesses choose to incorporate service areas. Similarly, business owners apply these tactics to social media channels, making their listing or page more likely to show up over the competitions’.
Beyond that, local citations help to drive business SEO for voice searches. Essentially, a local citation includes fundamental business information, such as the company’s name, address, phone number, and website. Standardizing your citations helps to drive search queries. Be sure to check out Moz’s local citation tool to see how your business fairs.
2. Use Conversational Keywords in Copy
In 2022, voice search queries largely depend on the search engine conducting them. With Google controlling over 92% of all search engine traffic, directing business attention to them makes the most sense. That said, Google typically offers three types of answers:
Direct Answers
Short Answers
Long Answers
With direct answers, Google usually answers a question in a single sentence. For example:
Question: “When was Facebook founded?”
Answer: “Facebook was founded February 4th, 2004.”
Short answers generally incorporate a brief explanation.
Question: “Who is Bill Gates?”
Answer: “William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, software developer, investor, author, and philanthropist.”
Lastly, long answers often break the process down into steps, and address how/why questions. In addition, these questions are rarely full answered by the search result text, often pointing users to specific links.
Question: “How do I start a business?”
Answer: “Small Business Administration. You’ll use your employer identification umber (EIN) for important steps to start and grow…”
What do all of these queries have in common? Long-tailed keywords. In essence, long-tailed keywords take the form of a conversational style. These queries tend to address specific questions. Website pages, such as frequently asked questions, are wonderful tools for preemptively answering customer questions and driving website traffic.
3. Build a Mobile-Friendly Site
As of 2021, Google reported that over a quarter of the world’s online population (27%) conducted voice searches via mobile devices. With such a substantial percentage defaulting to mobile voice queries, optimizing websites for different form factors is vital to present-day SEO efforts.
On mobile websites, content should collapse vertically. Similarly, the total number of images ingratiated into a single page makes a huge difference. The more images on a page, the slower the website loads (this is especially true for mobile devices).
Finally, streamlining the navigation bar helps immensely. While desktop websites work with a wide width, mobile variations don’t. Consolidating the navigation bar to the “hamburger menu” works to improve the display and SEO.
Drive Voice Searches to Your Website in 2022
As voice search progressively increases throughout the world, it’s quickly developed into an emerging customer preference. Strategically writing website copy that takes conversational dialogue into account helps to facilitate these searches.
Moreover, double-check that important business information appears consistently across third-party websites. Finally, building a streamlined website for mobile and tablet form factors helps users and search engines alike to find the content they’re looking for.
To optimize your website for voice queries, book an Intro Conversation with the SEO and digital marketing specialists at Rizzo Young Marketing.