Whether it’s on your phone, desktop, or tablet device, odds are you’ve used the capabilities of voice search at some point in your life. This is because voice search has rapidly grown into a defining feature of today’s technology. With 41% of adults using voice on a daily basis, voice search is a trend that marketers simply cannot ignore.
What Is Voice Search?
Perhaps one of the greatest catalysts behind voice search’s success is that it serves a simple, yet important role: to take the effort out of obtaining information from devices. In fact, searching with voice has been found to be 3.7 times faster than typing.
Typically, voice search involves someone asking a question or asserting a command to their device’s voice search assistant (ex. Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant). The voice assistant then recognizes the voice of the user, computes their request, and gets the job done with ease.
Overall, voice search is commonly used to:
- Make phone calls and send texts
- Look up directions and maps
- Open and use an app
- Ask inquiries and questions to be found on search engines
Why Should Voice Search Matter To Your Business?
Out of the above list, perhaps the most important voice search function for marketers to pay attention to is how it has changed the way that consumers search for information online.
This is because voice search has greatly impacted:
- What a consumer asks a search engine
- How consumers articulate queries to search engines
Think about it: what you might type on Google sounds and looks much different than verbally Googling with the help of a voice assistant. And because every word counts with a search engine, these subtle shifts in wording and tone have greatly impacted the content that appears high on a results page.
5 Ways To Generate Search Traffic With Voice Search
Nowadays, in order for your business’s website (and the coinciding marketing content and landing pages within it) to rank highly, you’re left with no choice but to optimize for voice search.
Having a solid understanding of SEO tactics for voice search will help you get in front of the target audiences that matter most to your business. Here are 4 easy ways to generate search traffic to your website with voice search at the forefront of your strategy:
#1: Make Your Content Mobile Friendly
Studies found that over half of mobile users would interact with voice search by 2020. This means that your website should appeal to this format. Making your content mobile-friendly is easy, and involves these two steps:
- Keep Copy Structured and Concise: Since we take mobile devices just about everywhere, much of the searches on them are made when we’re multitasking, commuting, or even driving. Make sure that your copy is ready for on-the-go consumption by using shorter sentences and phrases that are skimmable, and breaking up paragraphs into smaller chunks.
- Check For Mobile Compatibility: If you’re not sure about your website’s appearance on a phone, Google has a handy tool to see how your website measures up on a smaller screen.
#2: Keywords Are Critical
One SEO tactic that continues to reign effective with voice search is implementing keywords into your website’s copy. This is especially the case with long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are a few words in length, providing a conversational phrase as opposed to a word. They work better than single keywords because they mimic the conversational and longer sentences that voice searchers more commonly use.
Here’s an example for clarity:
“Hey Google, where can I find an indie bookstore in Denver?” In this sentence, ‘indie bookstore in Denver’ is considered the longtail keyword. Inserting this phrase in your content’s headlines, titles, or body text will help your content rank when audiences use the same search phrase.
#3: Provide Answer-Rich Content
When we ask voice search questions, we’re much more likely to use full sentences, question words (ex. who, what, when, where, why, etc.), and have better grammar. So much so that 34% of mobile voice searches are direct questions. It just comes more naturally than speaking a word or two as you might do when typing.
To capitalize on this opportunity, embed answers to commonly asked consumer questions in your content. This can be in the form of an FAQ page, or even a detailed blog post honing in on the answers related to a specific product or service you provide. That way, your content will pop up if those questions are asked by your audience.
And who knows, if it’s a good enough answer, you might just find your answer on the #0 slot of a search engine as a featured snippet. This, I can assure you, is always the ultimate SEO goal.
#4: Think About Content Being Read Aloud
Not only should your content be conversational in tone to match the voice that consumers search in, but you should also consider how your website’s content will sound being read aloud. This is because voice assistants have the ability to read a website back to consumers to keep the interaction completely hands-free.
To keep voice assistants from sounding more robotic than they already do, it is crucial that you maintain a friendly and approachable voice in your content at all times. This can be achieved through:
- Keeping It Simple: Don’t use fluff words or flowery adjectives that you wouldn’t dare say organically. In the same way that you would speak to your audiences, keep things concise and easy-to-follow.
- Avoiding Keyword Stuffing: Remember those long-tail keywords from earlier? Although they’re quite effective for boosting rankings, overdoing them puts you at risk of sounding robotic and spammy to both Google’s algorithms and audiences alike.
Get Target Traffic Fast
The more traffic your website sees, the more leads and sales that are inevitably made for your business. Making sure that your website’s copywriting and content is optimized for voice search is exactly what you need for succeeding in today’s world of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant.
