How Voice Search Can Impact Your SEO

If your site isn’t optimized for Google voice search, you could be losing out on a lot of potential for traffic.  Conversely, if you consistently and persistently work at optimizing your site for optimum customer experience, considering that visitors could be arriving via PC, smartphone, or without a screen via a voice assistant, you can look forward to being able to rank well for target key phrases as well as increase your incoming web traffic while boosting your rate of conversion for site visitors. 

Voice search is now considered an integral part of SEO and this is even bigger than SEO for mobile because you’re not just for targeting business where the target audience is on the move while searching for your product or service from their phone. With the increasing popularity of voice search capabilities, AI, and voice assistant technology, even people sitting in their office at their workstation are using it in lieu of putting fingers to keyboards at times.

Google and other search engines pay close attention to how well your web pages are optimized for people using their voice as well as their keyboard to make buying decisions.  And this is reflected in search engine results pages. Your efforts to appeal to keyboard searchers along with voice searchers will pay off as the trend continues to point to more and more people using voice search to find answers that assist them in making their buying decisions.

We’re Way Past the Early Adoption Stage 

Using voice search is becoming second nature to people of all ages. Whether your target customers are gen Z or baby boomers, an increasing number of them use voice search as part of their daily routine in everything from asking about the weather, finding out local movie showtimes, to making reservations, finding a local roofer / plumber / electrician, etc. to finding out which computer / SUV / television has the best ratings.  

Data Mining Will Help You with Voice Search SEO 

When was the last time you looked at your website analytics? Do they tell a story about how well you are or are not optimized for voice searchers? Are there trends and bounce rates that show you that there are SEO areas you need to improve upon? 

While it’s not always evident by the search terms whether the person used a keyboard or a voice assistant, it’s helpful to ensure you do your best to cater to people who are getting answers with and without a visual screen. Using natural language and thinking like prospective customers when creating and optimizing your web content will make a difference in voice search SEO success.  Delving into and interpreting your web traffic reports regularly will help you immensely with your SEO efforts. 

Find X Near Me 

In addition to providing those using a screen with a visually appealing customer experience, succinct answers and clear call to action on your website can help you convert voice search customers, effectively. People are hungry for answers and they want them fast.

Voice Search is Changing SEO

Smartphones and voice assistant technology have changed the SEO game. Instead of adding it into your strategy to cater to the up to X% of searches previously attributed to mobile voice search queries, the number is rising consistently. People aren’t just using voice assistant technology on their mobile phones, either. They use tools like Cortana with their PC. People use their Siri, Bixby, Genie, and other voice assistant tools. There’s also Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and others. 

Companies who factor Google voice search strategies into their search engine optimization strategy for users with and without screens will benefit from those efforts. Conversely, if you’re not considering how voice search is changing SEO, you’ll lose out on the opportunities it presents.  Statistically, it’s believed that the year 2020 will see a vast increase in voice searches for products and searches.

Voice Search Plus Responsive Web Design = Success

Considering user experience in your online marketing strategy will serve you well in your quest to use your website as a lead generation tool.  Where you strive to make it easy for your prospective customers to initiate contact, you’ll see results. 

Here are some tips:

• • Write content with the aim to get featured in Google snippets. If your site has them and you’ve got a great SEO strategy, there’s a chance your featured snippet will get read aloud. Crafting helpful content is important and can help your site get noticed, get seen as an authority in your niche, and therefore get more rankings and traffic.
  • Optimize for the long tail. SEO strategies that use geography are vital in this day and age. Ensure your site is optimized for your local area within metadata as well as in your off-page and on-page content marketing efforts. 
  • Claim listings on local directories and review sites so you’re certain they’re optimized and contain correct information.
  • Be sure you’ve claimed your red balloon/business listing with Google. 
  • Use natural language on your website to appeal to bots that crawl for answers to questions.
  • Answer frequently asked questions on your site succinctly. (People with and without screens using voice search often want answers fast and Google Home and Alexa, etc. search for the best way to answer people) Being succinct is subjective, of course, but after you answer your questions, look at those answers and try to shorten the word count by eliminating needless words without eliminating the natural-sounding flow of the answer. 
  • Leverage voice search in both your on-page and off-page efforts. 
  • Ensure you optimize site loading speed. Today’s searchers want information that’s succinct, but they also want it fast.

Look at Today’s Traffic Sources

When you dig into your website analytics, what sorts of searches are arriving on your page? Are keyword searches coming in that make it obvious that people are searching for you via voice search? Look at click through rates, bounce rates, and consider optimizing the pages they arrive on further to appeal to the searches those pages are getting. 

If you’re looking for help with SEO, be sure you deal with a marketing company that leverages voice search as part of its search engine optimization offerings.