As a voice search marketing agency in Jacksonville we make voice search optimization a priority for our clients. Voice search is on the rise and creates an even more competitive market than traditional search to earn visibility. Whether you personally use voice search or haven’t caught on to the movement yet, speech recognition for web searches is becoming routine among your customers and is a technology shift your business can’t afford to ignore.

Why you should care about voice search

Voice search began on smartphones and laptops but gained enough popularity to inspire dedicated speech recognition search devices. Voice recognition software has advanced to the point that all languages and accents register with devices, making voice search more inclusive than ever.

Popular stand-alone voice search devices

• Google Assistant
• Google Home
• Amazon Echo/Alexa
• Siri
• Microsoft Cortana

A traditional search result found on a web browser will return a full page of search results. The top three results dominate 66 percent of web traffic but the entire first page gets a fair amount of visibility. Voice search returns only three results for mobile but only the top result is delivered on speaker. This makes ranking first and maintaining good SEO more important than ever.

Keywords for voice search

Thе rеѕult оf vоісе ѕеаrсh іѕ mоrе ѕеmаntіс оr соnvеrѕаtіоnаl queries, which demands online marketing take on natural tones and create answer-based content. If your customers are using voice search to answer a question, prime your website to have the answer.

Keywords now center on questions more than ever and usually consist of five or more words. Often customers will use long-tail keywords, specific phrases consisting of three or more words, these specific, phrase-based searches account for 70 percent of all searches.

In order to build a keyword base, focus on questions you and your team receive from customers, this can be from emails, comments, or in-person inquiries. Try and replicate exact phrasing because this is likely what will be used in voice search. Use your question-based keywords to create content that answers those questions. It’s best to answer questions in the first sentence or paragraph of your content.

Create voice search friendly websites

The time, resources, and research your business has dedicated to the UI experience for a user was in the hopes of creating an attractive website or app to create customer conversions. It’s time to focus those same efforts on attracting voice search engines to your business.

Increase your SEO for voice search keywords by writing blogs covering the list of questions your customers ask and search for. Format your title or heading of your blog as the question you are answering and pack in your keywords within the first couple sentences. Google shows a sample of web content, when a search is returned, that includes only the first 65 characters.

6 Tips to optimize your website for voice search

1. FAQs– Add common searchable questions to your website to increase your visibility for voice search.
2. Pillar pages– Create dedicated pages on your website that cover a sub-topics of your businesses core purpose. This multiplies the information offered on your website and creates more content for voice search to find.
3. Insert Questions– Insert questions into your website through blog to match long-tail keywords.
4. Write how you speak- Natural speech will replicate user search questions more easily than strictly optimizing for keywords.
5. Local search– Use your city, state, county location in your website to rank for local searches.
6. Use customer support- This department of your team has the most one-on-one knowledge of frequently asked customer questions.
7. Imрrоvе online presence– Make sure уоur ѕmаll buѕіnеѕѕ іѕ listed on mаjоr lосаl lіѕtіngѕ sites, such аѕ Yеlр and Gооglе My Buѕіnеѕѕ, аnd thаt соmраnу іnfоrmаtіоn is up tо dаtе.

7 Important website metrics to measure

Test your success in implementing our voice search marketing tips by measuring CTRs, page crawls, landing pages, Google keyword rankings, exit pages, conversions, and bounce rates.

1. CTRs- This is the percentage of people who choose your link from the list of search results. If your content isn’t getting CTRs then you are not answering the questions your customers want to know. Google Search Console offers a free search analytics report that will collect CTRs for you.
2. Page Crawls- Google allocates certain resources to scanning your website. It is a considerate system and doesn’t want to over extend your server in doing so but it also wants to conserve its own resources by only scanning quality content. If your page crawls are low your content is not getting Google’s attention.
3. Landing Pages- A landing page is the first page a user selects to view your website. Each page will reflect how many users enter your website on that page. This is a reflection of what is attracting users and what is not. Show love to pages with low rankings and take a queue from high ranking pages.
4. Google Keyword Rankings- Keyword ranking can inform your SEO strategy. What are you ranking for? What aren’t you ranking for? Maintain your high keyword rankings and implement new strategies to create content to increase poor rankings.
5. Exit Pages– This is the last page a user views before leaving your website. These pages are the weakest link in your website and create friction that deters conversions.
6. Conversions- Track which pages are creating conversions. Attracting customers is the every pages goal but which pages are making the conversions? Use conversion pages as a template when possible to inspire more sales throughout your website.
7. Bounce Rates– This records how many users you lost within one page out of your total visitors. Viewing which page lost them can give great insights into what’s not working, awareness is key.

Businesses that most benefit from voice search

While every business needs to be primed for voice search, these are the industries that are currently most affected by voice search technology.

Restaurants– Customers using voice search for restaurants want to know menu information, directions to restaurant, hours of operation, and wifi availability. Customers typically will base their restaurant inquiries on food categories such as Italian, cafes, or burger joints.

Retail– Voice shopping is estimated to reach $40 billion dollars within the next two years, it currently accounts for $2 billion according to OC&C Strategy Consultants.

Voice shopped retail is broken into four major categories with groceries accounting for 20 percent, entertainment 19 percent, electronics 17 percent, and clothing 8 percent of all voice related shopping.

Food delivery- According to Orderscape, a food ordering automation technology company, 56 percent of voice search users want to order food over voice and 34 percent already have. The food delivery service has already adopted voice search into some of their apps to meet customer demands.

Important Takeaway

There is no one way to optimize for voice search but by using simple, intuitive adjustments your business can easily improve voice search marketing and increase visibility. To assess your voice search marketing efforts or to consult our voice search marketing agency, fill out this free audit request to optimize your business for voice search.