Creating voice search SEO-friendly websites first starts with understanding how we use voice search devices.
Voice search SEO is a hot topic nowadays but the reality is that there isn’t much information about it.
As Google rolls out algorithm changes and conversational design guidelines, we’re learning how to adapt our content and marketing strategies to it.
We won’t see an entire shift to voice search anytime soon but we can start with baby steps to get ahead of the curve.
Here is everything we have learned about voice search SEO for small businesses and what you can do today to get started.
What Is Voice Search SEO?
Have you ever heard of Alexa, Siri, or Cortana? No, they aren’t Victoria Secret Models. They’re virtual voice assistants inside of smart devices like smartphones or smart speakers. We use voice search to speak to them.
Voice search uses automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech technology to enable people to make Internet search queries simply using a smart device and our voices.
Why Should Small Businesses Care About Voice Search SEO?
Businesses big or small need to care about voice search SEO because it’s the future of search engines.
The majority of mobile phone owners are already using voice search into their everyday lives. Nearly 60% use voice search at least once per month and nearly half use it weekly or daily, according to Higher Visibility.
What’s more is that Google is avidly pushing the growth of voice search through new investment programs. If Google believes in voice search, that’s a huge sign for the rest of us! Developing voice search technology could open new doors for Google to acquire more consumer data and transcribe videos and audios to create more content.
Although we may not see an entire switch to voice search across the world this year, there are clear signs that we are moving into that direction. Small businesses are often the first to get crushed by big competition in SEO.
If you want to keep your rankings and stay ahead of the curve, it’s best to start optimizing your content for voice search SEO now.
How Can Small Businesses Start Doing Voice Search SEO?
As a small business, you can start applying some voice search SEO techniques and concepts to the most strategic areas of your website.
Voice search is great for content that provides straightforward answers to simple questions. For example …
- How-Tos
- Tutorials
- Listicles
- Timetables
- Contact Information
- Maps
Take a good look at your website and try to spot opportunities to update old blog posts and make them voice search SEO-friendly.
Google published a voice search design guide on the conversation and voice search design process.
Websites and content should be intuitive, visual, and replicate the mental model we already have on a topic based on our previous human to human conversations
How Does Voice Search Affect SEO?
The first step to understanding how voice search affects SEO is understanding how we use voice search devices as everyday users.
Although millennials use voice search more than any other age group, a study by eMarketer shows that despite our differences in age and gender, we all use it for similar purposes — to make simple and personal requests.
We typically use voice search for personal commands such as making a phone call, asking for directions, checking the time or getting a weather forecast.
So, how does this voice search affect SEO for small businesses?
Voice search is going to really affect how we create content. Since we use informal and conversational language with it, we’re going to see a growing importance for long-tail keywords and targeting keyword clusters. We’ll also see a growing importance for structured data throughout our website.
As we grow more and more comfortable with technology, and as voice search becomes more accurate, our queries will become more complex. We won’t just ask smart devices questions, we converse with them.
Long story short, SEO is going to be a lot more complex, layered, and multi-faceted.
Google calls this conversation design and has an entire guide on the process.
The only barriers that are stopping us from using voice searches from growing are trust and accuracy. it’s just a matter of time for us to grow more comfortable and for the technology to advance.
How Can We Track Voice Search SEO Traffic?
Since voice search SEO is so new, there still isn’t much information available about voice search analytics. At the moment, there is no specific tool or report to track traffic on your website from voice search queries on Google Search Console or Google Analytics.
For the time being, tracking voice search keywords is no different from tracking any other keywords.. However, we can try to dissect our analytics and try to pinpoint which keywords are being used by smart devices.
Since we use personal and conversational language with smart devices, the best way to track voice search keywords is to pay close attention to the nature of the keywords you get traffic from. The more casual and longer they are, the more likely it is that they are voice search queries.
For example, look out for the following keywords:
- How to…?
- I want to …
- Where is…?
- What times does…?
- When does…?
- What is …?
- Near me
Hopefully, we’ll see voice search devices and keywords tracked in Google Analytics within their Acquisition and Devices reports.
5 Lessons We Learned About Voice Search SEO for Small Businesses
The advantage of voice search is that since it’s so young, the voice search SEO techniques are quite simple to understand and easy to put into practice. Here are 6 lessons we learned about doing voice search SEO for small businesses.
1. Use the Same Language as Your Audience
As small businesses, we need to mimic the same natural and effortless language we use with smart devices in our content.
In other words, use long-tail keywords and don’t focus on one keyword but a group of keywords. That even means using complete sentences and questions, that include prepositions and articles. The more natural it sounds, the better.
Remember, an exact keyword match is not always necessary, especially if it sounds forced. If you use an SEO plugin like Yoast, this may seem counterintuitive since Yoast only recognizes exact matches. Use it as a guideline and don’t let it stress you out. An exact keyword match density of 0.05% is great.
Ever since the Google Hummingbird came out in 2013, a change in the algorithm, Google has been favouring context, conversation and meaning. Google is smart enough to pick up those alternatives.
Voice search SEO requires small businesses to really know our audiences and be familiar with the language they use. Avoid using technical terms or jargon that only people in the field would use, and instead use day to day language your customers use.
SeedKeywords is a useful tool for this. It allows you to create a search scenario and share it with your customers for them to type in the keywords they would use to solve it.
2. Embrace FAQ In Your Content
Instead of searching “chocolate cake ingredients” as we did 10 years ago with traditional searches in Google, we ask voice search devices complete questions like “What ingredients do I need to make chocolate cake?”
On top of using the same language as your audience, use Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) as an integral part of your content.
This could mean creating an entire blog post to answer a question, using questions as headings, or adding an FAQ section to your blog post. Either way, this will clearly reflect the natural language we use and the way we actually search on Google.
My favourite tool to brainstorm FAQs is Answer the Public.
Search a simple keyword, like “baklava”, and Answer the Public will give you a whole slew of questions (107 to be exact) that people have searched related to baklava.
These questions may include:
- What country does baklava come from?
- When is baklava eaten?
- When does baklava go bad?
- Why is my baklava dry?
- Why is baklava so high in calories?
- What kind of nuts are baklavas usually made of?
- Is baklava vegetarian? If not, how can I make vegetarian baklava?
3. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly Like Never Before
After Google’s 2018 algorithm change, Mobile-First Indexing, most small businesses already know that mobile-friendliness is important yet not everyone has caught up. With the shift towards voice search queries, mobile accessibility has never become more important.
With 20% of all mobile queries are voice searches and 1 in 6 Americans now own a smart speaker, voice search SEO techniques must be compatible with mobile in order to get picked up. Notes, those statistics are from 2017! Imagine what the figures must be like now.
Luckily, Google provides a number of tools to test your website’s mobile accessibility and speed. Search Console and Test My Site give a quick summary.
4. Always Find Opportunities to Structure Your Data
As Google moves towards a voice-search friendly index, it’s demanding we optimize content to have structured data, a code that allows voice search to work.
Structured data is code written in a specific format that communicates what your content is in a clearer way to Google. As a result, Google is able to display it in a richer way. This is called rich or featured snippets.
Using structured data and getting rich snippets will also encourage Google to read your content out loud in voice searches through Google Assistant and Google Home.
Which means more traffic. Since it’s relatively new, technical, and tedious to set up, you may find that your competitors haven’t caught up and are using structured data. If you need help setting up structured data for your website, let us know! As an SEO agency, we can do it for you.
5. Get Highly Localized
We usually ask smart devices to give us localized information. For example, asking for directions or the operating hours of a local shop, getting a weather report, checking the dates for local holidays or inquiring prices for local products.
From our experience, we believe that no one is going to benefit from voice search SEO more than local businesses. Creating a highly localized online presence is incredibly important for businesses.
This first starts with creating and strengthening your Google My Business and other social media accounts. Once you have a profile set up, incentive customers to leave detailed reviews with pictures, and as a business owner, keep it up-to-date and active.
Being highly localized also means using localized keywords. Use your geographic location throughout your website from content to meta descriptions and tags to your contact information. Take a step further and collaborate or promote your business with local businesses online to get backlinks and increase traffic from your local audience.
Make Small Changes
Although it will take a few years for users of all demographics to embrace voice search in their day-to-day lives, small businesses can make small changes today to make their websites more voice search SEO friendly.
