Voice search is now a permanent staple across many mobile devices and streaming services. Industry experts believe that voice searches will account for 50% of all searches by 2020. This goes to show that voice-enabled searches are continuing to soar in global popularity.
While Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa remain at the top of the heap, new voice-ready apps are popping up all over the place. So how will these existing and burgeoning technologies affect your online SEO campaigns? Let’s have a look or listen.
Change your SEO Strategy
The world of SEO is ever-changing at best. In fact, what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. With this in mind, you have to evolve with the new changes to remain competitively viable and visible. With voice search usage continuing to dominate the market, now is the right time to rethink or change your SEO strategies. Here are some significant figures to keep in mind about voice-based searches:
- Six million Americans use a voice-activated device at least once a month.
- One in six million Americans owns a pair of smart speakers.
- Digital voice assistants are evolving to understand user demands and behaviors. This is done with data retention which helps consumers take actions.
- You need to adopt voice search input/output into your digital marketing platforms. This allows potential clients and customers to search for the products and services they seek with user-friendly voice features.
Add Voice to your SEO Digital Marketing
Unlike traditional SEO techniques, voice searching requires a different optimization strategy. Remember, most users love convenience; this is reflected in over a billion voice searches per month according to Google. With 40% of these searches with local intent, your SEO must be optimized for voice.
The latter is enabling people to search for information, data, and product-services by merely using their voice. Google and other search engines are also morphing into voice-based platforms to provide accurate answers to user requests. This includes links to websites, online stores, blogs and more. With this in mind, here are some ways to optimize your content for voice:
Use Long-tail and Localized Keywords
Long-tail and localized keywords are genuinely the essences of voice-enabled searches.
Similarly, adding geographic indicators to these keywords is a must. For example, Houston espresso café, 6th Street cheeseburgers and Austin baseball supplies are good keywords that facilitate voice searches. Most users will simply not say one word into their devices to find what they need. They will expand on the word to include geographic location – city, zip, area, town, etc. Here are some other things you can do to ensure industry-specific and relevant keywords for voice searches:
- Get an SEO audit to analyze and assess your website’s main keywords. Local SEO professionals will run queries via voice to see how well your keywords are performing. They will also add geographical indicators (city/region/country, etc.) to make sure these keywords are responding to voice-activated user searches and questions.
- Do some research on keywords (within your industry or niche) that have three or more words. For example, Dallas volleyball nets, volleyball nets in Dallas, or volleyball supplies DFW.
- Check which keywords are performing higher than others. Take at least the top 30 from these lists for high-volume searches via voice. Make sure to use low competition keywords as well just to cover all your bases.
This is but one way to modify your SEO campaigns to address voice-related searches. Remember, voice search queries and longer than traditional text queries. Similarly, the way you look for information via text is different than voice. For example, “Best Indian food in Los Angeles” is something you would type on your mobile device. However, “What is the best Indian restaurant in Los Angeles” is something you would say when using voice search.
As a form of artificial intelligence (AI), voice-enabled assistants also gather and store data from previous queries. This helps them help you when searching for previously stored entries. While this may seem a lot to process, voice enabling expedites user searches that may convert into leads, higher traffic, and revenue. Keep your target audiences in mind when adopting and adapting voice strategies into your new or existing SEO online marketing campaigns.