It’s estimated that around 111.8 million people in the United States use voice assistants at least once a month. Voice search is becoming a constant in many people’s daily lives. Having your website well-positioned is becoming increasingly important as it becomes easier and easier to search the Internet.
Learn what voice search is, some of the best practices for voice search optimization, and what types of businesses will benefit the most from voice search. Then let E/Power Marketing help your business stay ahead with strategic content, search engine optimization, and more.
What is Voice Search?
Voice search allows people to speak commands to a voice-activated device to search the Internet. Some of the most common voice-activated devices include the Google Home, Amazon Echo, smartphones, and some in-car GPS devices.
The vast majority of voice searches performed are long-tail phrases, meaning phrases over 3 words. Voice searches tend to be more conversational than typed searches. These conversational queries often include words like “I”, “the”, “of”, “for”, etc. The searches also have a tendency to be formatted as a question, using “how”, “what”, “when”, “where”, and “why”. According to a study by Adobe Analytics: “the most common voice activities are asking for music (70%) and the weather forecast (64%) via smart speakers. Other popular activities include asking fun questions (53%), online search (47%), checking the news (46%), basic research/confirming info (35%), and asking directions (34%).”
Where do voice search results come from?
Most of the answers you get when performing a voice search are being taken from the search engine results page (SERP) in Google or Bing, depending on the device you use.
If you’re using Google Assistant, most voice search results will come from Google’s Featured Snippet. The remaining SERP features that can be used to serve your voice query include the Google Knowledge Graph, Knowledge Panel, and Knowledge Box. Apple’s Siri also provides voice search results from Google, as well as Apple Maps, Yelp, and Wikipedia.
Amazon’s Alexa provides results from Bing, Yelp, Yext, Wikipedia, and Amazon Answers. Microsoft’s Cortana also provides voice search results from Bing, Bing Places, and Yelp.
Best Practices for Voice Search Optimization
Optimization for voice search largely falls on content and search engine optimization (SEO). E/Power Marketing’s inbound team focuses on these best practices when we’re working to improve our clients’ voice search performance:
Answer real questions.
The E/Power Marketing team spends time researching our clients’ target audience, their most common pain points, and common questions users ask. Then we answer those questions in a clear, succinct manner in our web content.
Create conversational content.
The saying “write for users, not robots” is true when it comes to content. E/Power Marketing makes sure everything we write is easy to understand by real people.
Structure content in an organized manner.
Our content is not only well researched and well written, but it’s also easy to skim. We use headlines, bulleted lists, and jump links to make the content easy to follow.
Improve user experience.
E/Power Marketing makes sure our clients’ web visitors have the best user experience possible. If a website isn’t mobile-friendly and it’s slow loading, users will be more likely to bounce. If there’s a higher bounce rate, the website will be less likely to rank on the first page. We analyze the websites and work with clients’ developers to make sure users can find what they’re looking for immediately.
Set up maps listings.
We help clients with a specific service area or storefront open to walk-in traffic set up and optimize their business listings. The most important local listings for voice search are Google My Business, Bing Places, Apple Maps, and Yelp.
What Types of Businesses Benefit from Voice Search Optimization?
Many voice searches include the phrase “near me”. This indicates that users are searching for a local business like retail stores, restaurants, hotels, or attractions. People that are using a mobile device are likely expecting immediate results while they’re on the go. As we’ve shifted our focus back to helping our neighbors here in the Fox Cities, voice search has become even more important for our clients! Local businesses in Oshkosh, Appleton, and throughout the Fox Valley that cater to local customers need to pay attention to voice search!
Since people using voice search are usually looking for a business near them, this makes it even more important that you optimize your website for local SEO. You’ll want to implement to schema markup and make sure it includes contact information, service area, and product/service information. You should also make sure your Google My Business is up to date and accurate.
Ecommerce businesses can also take advantage of Google Shopping’s free listings. This will give you a better chance of showing up when someone uses voice search to find products. It will be important to have your products described as clearly as possible.
E/Power Marketing is Here to Help!
At E/Power Marketing, it has always been our policy to follow best practices when it comes to SEO and content creation. We’ve always focused on making sure our clients are giving real people the best experience no matter what stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in. Focusing our work on the target audience means we generate real results for our clients!
Let E/Power Marketing’s team help you optimize your website and position your business for growth.
Contact us for a consultation!
