In recent years voice search has become very popular, every day we can see people talking to their phones or smart devices. And they are not talking to other people, they are actually talking to Siri or Alexa, or lately ChatGPT and asking them things.
Just a few years ago nobody would have thought that we would be talking to our devices like Captain Kirk and Spock talk to The Computer in Star Trek. We knew that it would happen eventually, but we still liked to type in our queries and search the results ourselves.
To be fair, using the voice search was much tougher then and it didn’t recognize the things that we were saying. We had to repeat our questions many times, and usually they were simple queries like what the weather would be tomorrow or how much is 6 feet in meters.
The Rise of Voice Search
The rise in the voice search in the last few years is staggering. In the previous year 45% of Americans reported that they have used voice search on their smartphones.
And all ages are using it. For example approximately 33.6% of U.S. internet users aged 16 to 64 report using voice assistants weekly.
Also in 2024, approximately 98 million people in the U.S. have a smart speaker in their household.
So every statistic point out that at least third of Americans are using voice search almost daily, weather on their phones or their smart speakers. This is a huge rate of adoption of voice search and it has it’s implications on SEO. Which means you can do something to improve your chances your product or business to be recommended or come up during voice search.
How is Voice Search different From Text Search?
Queries from long search are usually better phrased which means that they are:
- Looking for more precise information – like instead of searching for “pizza”, you might search for “best pizza in Boston” or “best pepperoni pizza in Boston”. We are more delicate in our spoken queries than when we write.
- The query will be more conversational – you would just want to say “best pizza in Boston”, you would probably say “What is the best pizza in Boston?”. So adding question words, more connecting words, and keeping things conversational, which is kind of the opposite of what we do in regular text search where we try everything to make short and effective.
- Using longer keywords – when we speak we usually use more adjectives, so this normally is what happens in voice search. We usually try to go for longer keywords in SEO, but for voice search this is a must. We just need that adjectives and connecting words and we need the right arrangement to get most of it.
- Bigger probability of searching for local businesses and services – when you think about how we find local businesses it’s always by a recommendation or asking someone. So asking the voice search is the same thing, we usually do it to find local options that will not take us too much time to get to and will have good reputation.
- Mobile devices are usually where voice search happens – it’s very rare that someone will do a voice search from his desktop pc, it will always be someone searching from their phone or dedicated smart speaker. So that distinction is also important for voice search, because it means that we should always have in mind our target audience that uses mobile devices to search for our business.
How to Optimize your SEO for Voice Search?
To answer this question, we must know where Google gets its information to answer our questions? If we ask “How much time should I let the eggs boil for? and it answers “Your eggs should boil in around 7 minutes….”, Google will take this information from the featured snippet.
Featured snippet is a brief and concise information that also appears of the top of all search results when we type in our question, and this featured snippet is information taken from a content from some top ranking website. This website is usually in the top 3 positions for that keyword and they have written about the “average time to boil an egg” and the Google algorithm has pulled this info and read it to us. We should keep this in mind so we can know how to optimize our SEO.
So, the best way to get your information to appear in the voice search is to work on your featured snippets. You can do this in couple of ways, and we will give you some tips:
- Use conversational language: Write content that mimics how people speak. Include common questions your audience might ask. Write the whole questions like we said above “How long should I wait for my eggs to boil?”, even better write the question in H2 heading and write the answer below it.
- Answer questions: Create FAQ pages or blog posts that answer common questions in your industry. Use the Schema Markup for websites, and add your FAQs there. But also try to answer questions as you write your content. Especially questions that you think your target audience will use the voice search to ask for.
- Optimize for Mobile: Ensure your website is fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate. The most important thing for voice search is for your website to be fast. You must have a website that loads under 1 second, so the algorithm can extract your snippet and read it back to the user without any pause. So please try to speed up your website www.gtmetrix.com, on this website you can check your loading speed.
- Focus on Local SEO: Ensure your business details are up-to-date on Google Business Profile. Use location-specific keywords to get more local searches. Try to write more local content and list at least some of your products. Be sure to have your working hours as well as your address entered, so the voice search can give the users direction on how to get to you.
- Write your business name more often – this sounds stupid but it works. Having the voice search answer a question with your info is great but you need to have the name of your business at the end of that answer, so try to insert your business name near the questions that you think the voice search will answer. Don’t just rely on your logo and make it all minimal because you want people to know who are you and what you sell.
Conclusion
Voice search isn’t just a passing trend; it’s changing how people use technology and it will only get bigger. If right now one third of all Americans use it to search for their queries, image what will happen within few years?
Businesses need to optimize their content for voice search to stay competitive. This is especially true if you are a local business that sells your products and services in your community. You need to focus on voice search by using more conversational keywords, local optimization, and making sure their site is mobile-friendly, so you can stay ahead of the competition.
If you need help optimizing your website or your social media presence for voice search, don’t hesitate to contact us today. We have a ton of experience with SEO and we will surely be able to help you.
