The Rise Of Voice Search And What It Means For Your Business And Content

People are always changing the way they search, whether it is on their computer, tablets or mobiles. While traditional means of search is by means of text, things are shifting to voice.

The next wave of change is voice search. The changes voice search will bring forth are significant  – so significant that it is being called the voice revolution.

Why is it important to adapt to the voice revolution.

The trend of using voice instead of typing to search on different platforms like – Siri, Google, Alexa, Cortana, etc – is becoming increasingly popular.

It is important to take note of the voice revolution and it is important to accommodate for voice in your SEO strategy.

To really understand why – you have to take a look at the popularity of voice.

It’s estimated that with  Siri, Alexa, and Google, up to 50% of all searches will be performed over voice by 2020.

Despite these figures being estimates, it is still a very important consideration for your business to adapt to.

If you don’t optimize your SEO efforts for voice search, you’ll miss out on a lot of traffic and ranking which is critical for SEO.

How to prepare for the voice revolution

One of the most important things to know is to optimise for voice search behaviour as google ranks differently to it. It means that your site has to meet certain sets of criteria to rank well on voice search.

Some of the ways you can prepare are:

Keyword research: When using voice search, people tend to use long tail keywords that are used in a more conversational tone.

For example, if doing a traditional browser search, users are more likely to type “clothing stores near me”. With voice search, they would probably say something like “Where is the closest shopping store near me?”

This opens up opportunities to get traffic by using long tail keywords.

Only the first result is shown to the user: When doing a voice search, users are often shown only the first result in the SERPs. This means that unfortunately, ranking 2nd or 3rd doesn’t bring much traffic from voice search.

Featured snippets: Featured snippets are the boxes with direct answers shown at the top of the SERPs when you make a search. They are an important aspect of voice search because they are the results that users will get when they expect a verbal answer.

Some additional tips:

• Be mobile friendly. Voice search mostly happens on mobile devices.
• 22% of search queries are for local content. This reason makes It a great idea to get your GBM listing.
• Improve your site speed. Since the voice revolution is mostly mobile and smart speakers it is imperative to ensure your site loads as quickly as possible. A site that takes longer than 5 seconds to load will result in increased bounce rates which will impact your SEO ranking.
• Create or expand your FAQ page: Utilise FAQ content to capture long tail and voice search traffic to your site.

The voice revolution is no longer coming. It is already here.

For even more tips on preparing for the voice revolutions click here.