With the rise of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google, voice search volumes are increasing significantly. What started off as a novelty has now become the norm, with voice search offering speed and convenience. Well, what sets voice search apart from written search engine queries? Continue reading this article to find out more about voice search and how best to optimise your website in response to its growing popularity.
How is Voice Search Different?
As our lives get continually more connected to technology, voice search offers a convenient way for many people to find answers on the web. Voice search has been thrust into the mainstream by home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home. Although, many use the voice search functionality on their smartphones as well.
Voice search phrases and keywords are usually more conversational and long-winded compared to regular written search terms. When people search via typing they usually put in short phrases containing important keywords like “concert tickets”. Whereas voice searches are more comprehensive and are more likely to be fully formed sentences such as, “OK Google, where can I buy tickets to the concert tonight?”.
1. Understand Your Audience
Firstly, it is important to research who you think will be searching for your business. If you are a business selling a broad range of goods and services then you can have broad content to help capture this audience. However, for many smaller businesses, the easiest and most common way that consumers find you is through localised voice searches. This might include queries like, ‘Hey Siri, where is a florist near me’. So once you have identified the best way for customers to find you, then you can tailor your content around this.
2. Localise Your Content
A significant volume of voice search queries is made when people are on the go. Because of this, the phrase ‘near me’ is likely to be common in voice searches. Therefore, it is important to ensure that your content contains sufficient information about where your business is located. While broader keywords are a good way to bring in quality traffic from a wide range of places, location-based keywords will help guide high quality, local leads to your business.
A key starting point for this is creating or updating your Google My Business profile so consumers have up to date information as to your location and opening hours. Then you can populate your website with a mixture of broad and localised content to attract potential customers.
3. Include Long-tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are those search words that are longer and often more specific than short-tail keywords. As stated previously, voice searches are often longer and more conversational than regular searches because they are conversational in nature. Therefore it is important to make sure that your content goes into sufficient depth and detail to ensure that it captures those long-tail queries.
A good method to include long-tail keywords on your website is to include a FAQs section written in a conversational tone. This will allow you to answer a user’s questions in a keyword-rich way, and maximise your chances of having a response being included as a snippet on Google’s search results.
With voice search continuing its sharp rise in popularity, now is a great time to optimise your website. Be sure to follow these steps to ensure that you are capturing as many leads as you can for your business.
