How to Optimize for Voice Search SEO?
What is voice search SEO?
Voice search SEO is a dialog system designed to be a conversation between a human user and a computer interface. That can be your smartphone, a home smart speaker, or any other speech-enabled device.
Why are more people using it?
Convenience is a large part of why voice search is becoming more common. Saying an activation phrase like “Hey, Google” and asking a question the way you would in conversation, feels more natural than what you may type into a digital search bar.
Voice search is accomplished hands-free. Say you’re in the kitchen midway through a baking recipe with your hands covered in flour. With voice search, you can ask your phone to call up the recipe steps without getting it dirty.
According to data from Statista, other reasons people use voice search include:
- It’s more fun than a regular search
- It’s quicker than opening an app or booting up a computer
- People don’t like typing on their mobile phones
- It can be used hands-free in situations like driving
- People believe it’s a more accurate way to search
How to Optimize for Voice Search SEO?
Create Conversational Content
It’s clear that Google is mirroring conversational queries with search results that are more conversational in nature. Voice searches contain long tail keywords and full sentences as opposed to short searches that are typed. Your blog titles, video titles, and other content headers should follow this more natural language approach. Titles such as “What are the best bike shops in L.A.?” will give you better results than “Best bike shops Los Angeles” as they reflect how people speak and therefore how they make voice searches.
Prioritize Local Search
If you have a business that relies on local traffic then you should prioritize your local search SEO. 58% of users have utilized voice search to find a local business and that number is only growing. When people are traveling and on the go it makes sense to use voice search to find restaurants and services as they move. Prioritize for “near me” searches and of course for mobile as that’s how people on the go search.
Know Your Customers and the Devices They Use
What percentage of your customers use voice search? Are they millennials or Gen-Z? Where do they live? Analyzing your site and industry data can give you insights into where your voice search SEO efforts should be focused. This includes which demographics use which devices, another insight that helps to pinpoint where you should direct your energy.
Use Schema Markup
Markups are pre-defined guidelines or values that you can follow to help search engines understand your marketing content. Schema Markup is an HTML add-on that puts your digital content into a context that Google can understand. Google is looking for answers to users’ questions and adding a Schema Markup helps you provide those answers. This in turn has a serious impact on your SEO, especially concerning voice searches.
How is voice search SEO different from other types of search?
Keywords for voice search are longer and more conversational
When typing in a text search, the focus is on the relevant keywords we’d like a search engine to pick out — “meatloaf recipe,” or “gas near me,” for example.
Voice searches tend to be worded like actual questions because that’s what comes more naturally. You wouldn’t say, “gas near me” to another human. It’s the same thing for voice search. You’re more likely to ask, “Hey Siri, where’s the nearest gas station?”
Voice search favors local listings
Many voice searches are used for “near me” questions — people trying to find the closest gas station, restaurant, dry cleaner, etcetera to them right now. According to Google, “near me” searches that also contained some variant of “can I buy” grew 500 percent between 2016 and 2018.
Voice search is quick and to the point
Voice search is designed to get results quickly and bring up an easy-to-read snippet with the most useful information right at the top of the marketing page. Why? Because people using it are most likely doing something else while they search, like driving or cooking. They need information quickly.