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What voice search means for your SEO

August 23, 2017

Guess what? Since mid-last year mobile traffic has overtaken desktop – I know, what a shocker. Voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Cortana are being treated less like typical search engines and more like digital senseis always there at your whim with whatever cosmic questions you need asking.

Where are they Coming From?

The convenience of having the world in your hands is broadening orally and with the rise of affordable smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo, Apple Homepod and Google Home, we all need to be paying attention in not how we type but how things are said and what question is being asked.

Homes are becoming smarter with the ‘The internet of Everything’ and integration between devices meaning voice search assistants will be with us from the fireplace to the workplace.

However, let’s not kid ourselves that most voice search queries are coming from mobile devices so this is a bellwether to make sure your website is fully optimised.

What are they saying?

We talk to our devices completely differently to how we interface with desktops or phone, users more often than not have to address their digital assistant by name – already this is getting very personable.

It’s well worth your time to look at some of the more informal queries as user trends suggest we navigate through the web conversationally and it would be beneficial to look at developing content to be more informal especially when looking at broadening audience reach.

Voice requests come in the form of questions, looking for a simple quick answer so this maybe a good time to liaise with customer service and get some insight into what are some of the frequent questions received from customers.

This may be a good time to build a fantastic Q&A or FAQ landing page as it can be excellent content for accessibility and has the flexibility to include those conversational queries that crop up.

Where are they going?

One of the most popular queries is ‘near me’ so if you’re business is strategized locally, voice search is a great way to connect with customers, make sure users can see you through Google My Business Listing or showcasing products local inventory ads.

The importance of location can be seen in the SERP, for example, a top keyword phrase match for ‘chip shop’ is ‘chip shop near me’ and we can see plenty of more examples that can be found for searching for any type of business.

One the most important aspects of optimisation for mobile sites is when it comes to location. That’s because 61% of users are more likely to buy from a site if it’s personalized to their location.

Long-tail Keywords

Great attention needs to be placed on those long tail keywords. For this, our content needs to be more reactive and emulate answers to a common question. So, in any keyword research focus needs to be put on those long tail keywords that pop up that will become fruitful and you should see results near-instantly.

Site Speed

Users are always looking for a quick interface and the crawlers know this, make sure your site is as fast as can be so when someone asks a question they are able to get the information a quick as possible with the relevant content.

Looking forward

Voice search is advancing at an ever-growing pace, with technologies being able to understand more of natural language so it’s an exciting time to be at the forefront of growth and developing digital relationships.

 

 

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