The Emerging Power of Voice Search
“Hello Google,” or “Hey Siri” are two things that you hear all around you these days.
The act of typing in searches into a device is quickly disappearing with the prevalence of voice assisted searches rising higher than ever before. The thought that over 1 BILLION voice searches are performed every month brings into glaring focus that it is definitely the growing trend of the future. Especially in local searches with 58% of people looking to find a business quickly and they find it easier to speak the question then trying to find the right words to type. And by doing this they have changed the way that you get results.
With long-tailed keywords, “Near Me” searches and the conversational style of speaking which brings more context to what you are searching for, search engines are adapting by bringing you results better tailored to your intent then it would have if you had typed in your query.
Who uses voice search and what are the benefits?
Everyone use voice search for basic things like “What’s the weather like today?”, “Play music by…”, “Find the nearest hardware store” to more uncommon searches like, “What did my web designer mean when he said…?”, “How can I kill the weeds in my lawn without killing my grass?”.
All of these results will be more in line with user intent because user intent and context come through more clearly then if you had just typed in “How to kill weeds?”
With the weather, music, news, entertainment, and shopping being the top 5 things people voice search for, it becomes more obvious that the need for voice optimized sites are what any growing business needs to keep current and to compete for local business.
Do not underestimate this growing trend, that would be a huge mistake to the future of your online presence, to be completely skipped by search engines because of what you might consider a ‘fad’. To be left behind now will mean a big leap later to try and catch up.
Now here comes the part that you will care about: the main ways that this will affect your business.
There are several ways this will affect you, the first being in your keywords.
Long-tailed, conversational keywords embedded into your site will help you get noticed. With the queries that people pose being in a more conversational style Google will be looking for a more complete answer. Changing the copy on your website to reflect an answer to the possible questions that might be asked in your industries niche will be a great way to start.
Rich snippets are also a key component to Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) and a voice assistant will often read these results to you.
Have you ever searched for a restaurant and in the search results you might see their ratings, menu, reviews? Or looked for a movie and under the search results there might be information on the times that the movie will be showing at that theatre, all right there on the search results?
Those are called rich snippets and that is something that Google loves to see on a website because it makes it easier for Google to index what that site is about. Google will show that information in the search results to help people decide if the site is one that they will want to visit.
How to make your website VSEO ready
Now we come to the part where you learn a new term:
VSEO Voice Search Engine Optimized
There are several ways to optimize (make the best of) your website for voice search, you need to better understand the user intent behind their queries, as well as conduct keyword research into long-tailed keywords and use more conversational content that will help Google better understand and bring that understanding to the user.
Your digital manager will also need to optimize (make the website better) for featured snippets to help search engines better understand what your site is about. Rich snippets have been around a long time, and they are becoming more important because the voice search uses these snippets to answer your queries (questions).
And last but definitely not least it is becoming more and more important to enhance your website’s mobile friendliness.
Since a majority of these voice searches are done on mobile devices it is essential that your website be enhanced effectively for mobile usage. Load speed times are a very important part of this process since you have about 1.2 seconds to catch a user’s attention before they push the back button to try the next site on the search results list.
All of these processes are not easy for the general public to perform on their own, so my advice is to find a good digital marketing agency like Silver Moon Agency to keep your website on the cutting edge of technology and to keep the referrals from your website coming in !!