60% of all search is now performed on mobile devices with many users resorting to voice assistants such as Siri, Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa. Our research highlights 3 key drivers for organizations looking to adapt their content for voice SEO.
Voice search is now bigger than ever before, and the writing on the wall is that it will keep getting bigger. As the adoption rate of virtual assistant soars, businesses all over the world begin to look for ways of reshaping their web content, from traditional SEO to voice SEO.
Why does voice SEO matter?
The impact of voice search on digital marketing is growing every year. Today, around 20% of search queries are done by voice and by the end of 2019, it was estimated 3.25 billion digital voice assistants being used in devices around the world. Why are consumer’s changing the way they search for a business, topic and/or brand?
One of the main reasons behind this shifting trend is that voice searching comes naturally, and is also faster than typing. For brands, adapting their SEO to voice search might mean visibility and credibility, a way to be found by new consumers, who are starting to use this search medium on a daily basis.
Who is using voice search and why?
Younger people are the largest voice search demographic. Even though people of all ages are using voice search, most of them (76%) are people between 18 and 34. In the 12 last months, they searched specially for a local businesses and 15% that haven’t tried voice search report to be considering it in the near future.
In terms of regularity, 46% of consumers look for a local business using voice search on daily basis and 28% use it once a week.
Statistic results from marketing enquiries show that people use voice search mostly to look for restaurants, grocery stores, food delivery, clothing stores and hotels. They expect voice search to help make in run of the mill activities such as making a reservation, price comparison and finding out which products a specific brand might offer.
Specifically for food and leisure brands, voice search has proven to drive traffic to the website (as report by 27% of users) and awareness (28% call the business and, before the pandemic struck, 19% visited).
Staying ahead of the competition with voice search optimization
For businesses of all sizes, adapting digital marketing efforts for voice search will be key in ranking higher. As usual, time is vital and changes made to content should be done soon, rather than later, to keep competition at bay. Here a few pointer marketing managers might consider.
Content optimized for voice search SEO is more focused on conversational phrases and longtail keywords, since users are most likely to talk to their virtual assistant as they would to a human beings, rather than only using simple and short keywords like when they text. For instance, in voice search users might ask something in the line of “Hey Google, which restaurants are open now near me?”, instead of using short and simple computer language “restaurants around me”. In fact, voice search uses an average of 7 words per search, as opposed to only 3 in text search.
When it comes to voice search, specifics matter. Often, people make spoken queries looking for specific information related to a business/brand. Ensure your page has updated and clear details like address, store timings, locations, and other related topics. Also, it might be helpful for brands to look into what people are actually voice searching in each industry, based in your customer data and social media analytic tools. Display replies for this information in a FAQ page or in a blog, creating content around phrases and longtail keywords related to your business.
Location-related keywords, tags and images, will likely mean more customers. Voice search is 3x more likely to be used for a local business research. So, check if your page is listed in local search directories like Google My Business with all the information completed and visible.
Search is constantly evolving. The age of local and voice-focused search is transforming marketing once again. By making sure each and every page is adapted for voice search, today rather than tomorrow, competitive organizations might find themselves better suited to reap the benefits.