Voice technology is becoming better.
And with it, voice search is becoming bigger.
More people are doing voice searches on their smartphones. And others are using voice to search on smart speakers.
How do you stop losing and start gaining customers as a result of this booming trend?
You have to optimize your content for voice search. Fortunately, that’s what you’re going to learn in this post.
But before we go on, what do you understand by the concept of voice search?
What is voice search?
Voice search is simply the process of using voice commands to carry out a search query on a search engine. For instance, a statement like “Ok Google” will launch the Google Android app on an android phone. Users can then say their search query.
The rise of voice search
Voice search has been available to users for years. But the technology adoption has been low until recently.
One of the stumbling blocks for voice search had been its voice transcription accuracy. Of course, it’s only common sense that fewer people will use voice search if their devices commit errors turning their voice to the right texts.
But that has changed over the years. For instance, voice search giants like Google and Microsoft have been able to achieve a voice transcription accuracy of 94.9%.
To put this in context, these voice engines can transcribe voice as accurately as human beings. With this improvement, voice searches have gained more popularity with users.
An example of this is that voice search accounted for 20% of the total Google searches on the Android app in 2016. Well, expect that to be higher now
This is because adoption for voice search has been very fast. Consider a survey by MindMeld in late 2015. Fully 3 out of 5 correspondents claim they started using personal assistants in the past year.
Another reason you want to optimize your content for voice search is that it’s a trend that’s popular among young people. A study by Thrive Analytics shows that among 18 to 29-year-old Americans who own smartphones, 71% of them use personal assistants. Similarly, 59% of 30 to 43-year-olds use personal assistants on their smartphones.
During this period, smart speakers have come to the scene and they operate using voice commands. The 3 biggest products are the Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod.
These devices are growing in popularity considering the number of users. In fact, research by NPR and Edison Research shows that 16% of American adults own a smart speaker.
That’s about 39 million Americans. Undoubtedly, this is a huge potential for your business.
Talking about potential, OC&C Strategy Consultants found in a study that voice retail is expected to reach $40 billion and $5 billion in the United States and the United Kingdom respectively by 2022. This is up from $1.8 billion and $0.2 billion in 2017.
But why are your potential customers using voice search more? What are the benefits for your potential customers?
Reasons why consumers use voice search
If you’ve used voice search in the past, you’d have noticed some of these benefits for the user.
Easy to use
Rather than hold your phone and type a search query with a risk of “mistyping” many words, you can just speak into your phone and get your questions answered.
Faster to use
You can usually speak faster than you can type on your phone. This reduces the time spent before getting your results.
For instance, voice search is 3.7X faster than typed searches.
Allows for multitasking
Just as you can talk while doing other tasks, the same applies to voice search. For instance, you can carry out a voice search for nearby restaurants while driving.
You can order for a pizza through your smart speaker while taking your bath. And you can even use voice search while walking on the street. If you don’t mind looking weird.
In a study by Kleiner Perkins, 61% of people say they use voice search because they can use it with their hands and eyes busy and 30% prefer it for the faster results.
Characteristics of voice search queries
In many ways, voice search queries differ from typed queries. These differences can help you adapt your content to target more voice search terms. Some common differences are:
Voice searches are longer
People try to save time when typing search queries. But they don’t have to do this with voice search.
Therefore, voice searches tend to be longer as people use words they would avoid in a text query. For example, a text search could be “Donald Trump age” while an equivalent voice search could be “what is Donald Trump’s age?”
Statistics show that voice search queries contain an average of 4.2 words while text queries contain an average of 3.2 words.
Voice searches are conversational
When people carry out voice searches, it usually sounds like a conversation with their smartphones or smartspeakers. In most cases, these search terms sound like questions you’d ask another person. For instance, you can have a query like “where’s the nearest restaurant to me?”
Consider that almost 10% of voice search queries start with who, what, where, when, why, and how whereas only 3.7% of text queries start with the same words.
Having said these, what are the important steps to take to ensure your website shows up in the top 10 search results? And even more, in the answer box, position 0?
Use keyword research to find probable voice queries
If you target keywords that people use when they perform voice searches on their devices, then it’s easier to show up for these searches. But how do you know these keywords?
Keyword research
While carrying out keyword research to target voice search queries, you’re looking for keywords that sound like spoken words. In many cases, these keywords can be in form of questions.
If you already have a list of keywords you target for typed queries, you can put it into your keyword research tool and see the similar suggested keywords. The truth is that no keyword tool will show you some keywords are voice search queries.
Because Google doesn’t release this information at the moment. And there’s no perfectly accurate way to identify a voice search query.
However, you can check for some voice search characteristics and use your instinct to predict searches that are likely to be voice terms.
There are many keyword research tools you can use for your keyword research. Some of them are SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic SEO, Cognitive SEO, Ubersuggest, Keywordtool.io, etc.
Apart from the keyword research tools, you can also get ideas on Google search results page. The infinite “People also ask” box will give you many conversational terms related to your keyword.
Check out the example below for the search term “content marketing:”
Check Forums for keyword ideas
People tend to ask structured questions on forums to enable other forum users understand their questions and provide the right answers.
Going to forums can give you an insight into possible questions that people might ask in your niche. All you have to do is search about your topic on a forum to see possible questions.
Check out this example on Quora:
Write conversational content
Search engine optimization is evolving. There’s a shift from overdependence on keywords to providing value to the user.
This is not to say you shouldn’t do keyword research. But before targeting a keyword, you need to understand the user intent behind that keyword. And satisfy that user intent.
This way, you have a better chance of ranking your page higher on the search results page. One way of satisfying user intent for voice searches is publishing conversational content.
Note that many people carry out their voice search queries like a conversation. A question that requires your answer. How well you can have a valuable discussion with your audience will determine how high you can rank.
How important is conversational content? Google introduced Rankbrain in 2015 to sort out the best search results for its users. And Rankbrain is the third most important Google ranking signal.
It uses past searches to understand user intent for new searches. It also uses user interactions with a page to understand how valuable it is and rank it accordingly.
What’s the best way to optimize for Rankbrain? By writing conversational content. In fact, Google’s Gary Illyes recommended this to website owners.
He said: “If it sounds conversational, if it sounds like natural language that we would use in your day to day life, then sure, you are optimized for RankBrain.”
Make your website mobile responsive
Most people carry out voice searches on their mobile devices. Having a poor mobile site will harm your chances of showing up for voice search results.
In fact, it will harm your chances of showing up for searches altogether. Because mobile devices now account for more Google searches than desktop.
About 60% of Google searches are done on mobile devices. This shift to mobile search led Google to mobile-first indexing.
What this means for your website is that its mobile version will be indexed before the desktop version. How do you check if your website is mobile-friendly?
Enter your website address into the Google mobile test tool. You’ll see if your website is mobile-friendly or not.
You’ll also get recommendations on what you can do to improve your website’s mobile friendliness.
The most important step you can take is to use a mobile-responsive theme that can adapt to the shape of any screen.
Improve local SEO
Many people who carry out voice searches on their smartphones or smart speakers search for local terms. In most cases, it’s impossible to talk about voice search without mentioning local search.
For someone traveling through a city, they can perform a voice search to find a local restaurant or coffee shop. These are searches you want to show up for if you run a local business. Simply because these searchers are ready to spend money almost immediately.
In fact, Google found that 50% of people who carried out local searches on their smartphones and 34% of people who searched on their tablets/desktop visited a store within a day.
To get the best out of your voice search optimization, you have to get your local search optimization in place. What are the steps to take to improve your business local SEO?
Create and optimize your Google my business page
Having your Google My Business page enables your business to show up when people in your locality search for keywords related to your business. This process is vital as you want people who use voice search to find your business.
Even if you’ve targeted the right keywords on your website, it would be impossible for your business to show up in the local map pack. Therefore, creating a Google My Business page will enable your customers to find you.
However, your work is not done after creating your Google My Business page. Because your main aim is to show up among the 3 businesses featured in the local map pack. You’ll have to optimize your page to achieve this aim.
Some ways you can optimize your Google My Business page are:
Having important details on your page
When people visit your page, they should be able to get enough information to contact you or visit your business location. A page without the necessary information provides no value for the visitor and will find it difficult to rank.
Encouraging reviews on your page
Customer reviews help you to establish your credibility as a business. Google can see your business as popular, and therefore having customers’ confidence. Likewise, potential customers can have more knowledge of your business. You should encourage your customers to drop reviews on your page.
Adding images of your business
This can help a customer recognize your business location when they visit your area. Also, you can post images about the work you do for your customers.
Adding posts
Through these, you can inform customers about events, promotional offers, and new developments about your business. Even though posts usually disappear after 7 days, you should write posts regularly as a way to update your page. And it will take just a few minutes.
Apart from having your business details on Google My Business, you should also add your business to other local business directories like Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, etc.
While doing this, you should ensure that your business name, address, and phone number are consistent across all the local business listings.
Include local keywords in your content
There are some terms particular to where you live. And these are the terms people in your locality will use when they carry out voice searches. Some common local keywords you can implement are:
- Keyword + location
- Keyword + near location
- Keyword + near me
There are other keyword ideas. For instance, between 2015 and 2017, “near me” searches rose by 150%. This shows more people use it for their voice and local searches.
One of the most important questions to ask what particular word people in your area will use to search for your service. Do they call it “trousers” or “pants?”
Conclusion
Voice search is a growing trend. And it’s here to stay.
If you’re not optimizing your content for voice search, you’re already losing customers. You can change that today by implementing the strategies explained in this guide.
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Samuel writes long-form guides to help businesses and entrepreneurs achieve better results from their marketing activities. He also writes for marketing and SaaS companies that want more leads and customers. Get in touch with him to discuss your content needs.