If voice search isn’t already a part of your overall SEO strategy, then now is the time for you to embrace this useful new technology.
Voice search is currently one of the fastest-growing types of search, allowing users to save time and enjoy searching free from buttons’ constraints.
The largest demographic using voice search in the United States is 18-29-year-olds, with 71% of this group using mobile personal assistants. However, other age groups are not far behind, with 59% of 30-43-year-olds using voice search and 39% of those aged 44-53.
What does this mean for your business?
If you want to keep up with your competitors, you need to optimize for voice search.
If you are unsure where to start with this new tech, keep reading to find out:
- What is voice search?
- Key voice search stats for 2021
- What are people using voice search for?
- How to optimize for voice search
What is voice search?
Before working out how you are going to optimize your website for voice search, it can first be a good idea to find out exactly what it is.
In its simplest form, voice search is a type of technology that allows users to use a voice command to perform a search on the Internet, a website, or an app.
On a more technical level, voice search works by:
- Processing and transcribing human speech into text
- Analyzing said text to detect questions and commands
- Connecting with search engines to find the most relevant information
- Translating that information into an easily consumable format to fulfill searcher intent
Key voice search stats for 2021
- 8 million people in the U.S. are using voice search
- This equates to nearly 40% of all internet users
- 71% of consumers prefer to use voice search rather than the traditional method of typing
- 23% of U.S. households have a smart speaker
- 52% of all smart speaker owners use their devices daily
- More than half of all online shoppers in the U.S. use voice search to conduct research
- Over a third of all online shoppers use it to add new items to their shopping cart
- Over a third of consumers find voice search less intrusive than typed searches
What are consumers using voice search for?
If you want to optimize your website for voice search effectively, you also need to know what people are searching for using their smart speakers.
Research shows that there are four main categories that people use voice search for. These are as follows:
- 22% of people search for local information
- 30% of people search for general information
- 21% of people search fun recreational purposes
- 27% search as a personal assistant
By understanding what people are using voice search for, you can determine what optimization techniques you should use to best suit their searching needs.
How can I optimize my website for voice search?
Now comes the exciting part, optimizing your website for voice search so that you can enjoy higher rankings on all the popular search engines.
Let’s first look at how voice searches differ from traditional typed searches.
1. Voice searches are longer and more conversational
When you are typing a search into Google, you are highly like to keep the text you type as succinct as possible.
For example, if you are looking to optimize your business for voice search, you might type:
“Optimize for voice search “or “voice search optimization”
However, if you are using voice search for the same query, you might use longer phrases such as:
“Hey Google, how can I optimize my website for voice search?”
2. Voice searches are often used for local searches
The maximum volume of voice search requests consist of “near me” questions. This means that voice search queries are being used to:
- Find places to stay, visit or eat in
- Find information about opening times, directions, etc.
Furthermore, many of these voice searches are conducted while people are out and about, so they are being carried out on mobile devices.
3. Voice search results are mostly featured snippets
As a general rule, Google relies heavily on featured snippets and knowledge graphs to answer voice queries. This is because people using voice search want fast and relevant results that they can consume quickly.
Keyword research for voice search
Carrying out keyword research for voice searches is slightly different from when you conduct it for typed searches.
When carrying out keyword research for voice search, make sure you keep the below types of keywords at the forefront of your mind:
- Question keywords. Most voice search queries contain the words like what, why, where, and how.
- Long-tail keywords. As voice searches tend to be longer, you should include long-tail keywords in your content.
- Filler words. To ensure your keywords sound as natural and conversational as possible, use filler words such as the, for,
Other SEO strategies for voice search
- Earn a featured snippet
Featured snippets are one of the most crucial elements of optimizing for voice search, specifically created by Google to cater to both on-the-go searchers and voice searchers.
A featured snippet is the selected search result that appears on the top of a search result page as the best possible answer to a query.
To maximize your chances of being a featured snippet, make sure your content is easily digestible and offers repeatable information that can be shared quickly.
- Target long-tail keywords
As briefly mentioned above, long-tail keywords are an important part of optimizing for voice searches, but did you know that long-form is also crucial? You may already be aware that Google is a fan of long word counts, so for optimal results, you should aim to create long-form, valuable content that contains long-tail keywords which appear in voice queries.
- Create FAQ pages
A simple yet highly effective way to optimize for voice search, by creating an FAQ section on all your product pages and blogs, you can include your keywords within these, and this format is easy for Google to pull content from.
- Use conversational language
Avoid robotic-sounding language when optimizing for voice search and instead focus on using natural, more conversational phrases.
This type of language also lends itself well to matching searcher intent. To maximize your chance of having the answer to a voice search, ask yourself the below questions when you are optimizing your content:
- What type of question keywords are people using?
- What is their conversational style?
- What types of answers are best suited to these queries?
- What answers are already performing well?
- Improve your page loading speeds
For voice search, the rules are pretty much the same as with typed searches for page loading speeds. Users want immediate answers to their queries.
You can check your page loading speeds using Google PageSpeed Insights and if your speed falls up short, try the below quick fixes:
- Use compressed images
- Reduce redirects
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Do a code clean-up
- Enable caching
Conclusion
Voice search is set to continue rising in popularity over the next few years and beyond, meaning that you need to act sooner rather than later when it comes to optimizing your website and its content for voice searches.
If you do not have the time or resources to do this in-house, why not outsource to an SEO consultancy firm? With a proven tracks records of great results and all the latest SEO tools at our disposal, we can help you make the most out of voice search technology.
