How Can Voice Search Benefit Your SEO?

Now is a good time to think about incorporating voice search into your SEO strategy to give your business the best chance of exposure.

Google Assistant. Siri Alexa Cortana.

Today you have a choice of high-quality voice assistants, and they can all do some great things.

One of these things is to help users find answers to questions. Essentially, what a person would normally turn to a search engine for, voice assistants can find resources and read them out loud.

Today, it is not new to say that voice search provides extraordinary SEO opportunities for businesses.

After all, if those popular voice assistants are reading answers to people's questions, they can probably read your website content as some of those answers!

The numbers also contain:

• In the United States, 40.2% of people use voice search.
• 71% of people prefer to use voice search to actually type a search online.
• According to Google, 27% of global internet users use voice search on mobile.
• 58% of people used voice search to find information about local businesses.
• So, voice search is a real industry – and it's not going anywhere.

However, hold your horses, because your website will not appear in voice search results just because it has content.

Here's what you need to understand about voice search optimization — before you start using it for your SEO strategy.

What is voice search?

To start simple, let's answer the basic question of what voice search is.

Voice search allows people to use voice commands with their smart devices to retrieve online resources.

It works like a computer or smartphone, except you use your voice to search for things instead of typing.

The smart device uses artificial intelligence to process the language, consult the relevant search engine and return the best result to the user.

Voice search is used for all kinds of inquiries, from direct questions and answers to driving directions and even jokes.

Voice search is getting better all the time. In Google's case, this is largely due to the search engine's use of natural language processing.

Natural Language Processing (or NLP) is what allows Google, as a machine, to not only read search queries but also interpret them in a human-like way.

Through NLP, Google interprets searches linguistically, meaning it quickly understands what the search means, not what is said.

You can see the benefits for people using voice search to access online resources using their voice assistant, but what are the benefits for businesses?

How can voice search benefit your SEO?

If you're just learning what voice search is, the wheels might start turning on how an SEO strategy can help your business.

But let's discuss the truth of the matter, if things are still a bit murky.

For each voice search, the voice assistant will read the result aloud.

Now, when you're looking for directions, your voice assistant will give you exactly what you need.

But when you have a real inquiry — a question about who someone is, how something works, or why something is the way it is — your voice assistant will turn to organic content for an answer.

This is your chance to shine because the content your voice assistant reads can be your own!

The answer is usually what will be the featured snippet on your regular search engine results page (SERP).

This means that any content at the top gets the added benefit of being read by users as the most reliable source to answer that question.

Since SEO is all about establishing your business as a trusted authority in a niche market, it's essential to show up in someone's voice search if you want to grow through SEO.

After that, it's all about optimizing voice search.

Here are some points to consider; You don't have to do just one thing to show up in voice searches.

With that, let's learn how to optimize your business's online presence for voice search.

There are two ways you can target voice search.

I believe there are two main ways to improve voice search: optimize your content, and optimize your local business' NAP information.

If you want your website to appear as an organic result in voice search, or if you want your company's NAP information to appear in a map pack, you need to know who is searching for these things. What do they want.

Let's cover what each of these actually means.

Improving organic matter

So, you want your site content to show up for voice queries like “easiest baked potato recipe,” “how to use photogrammetry in a car accident,” or “stains in a dalmatian.” Why does it happen?

The general way to think about it is to focus your content directly on what people want – which is the real purpose of the question.

What is the meaning of this?

Take the Dalmatian question.

If you run a dog blog, are looking for a keyword query, and want to show up as a voice search answer when people search for it, here's what you do.

Make the question the title of your blog post.

Google assigns a significant amount of organic search weight to the title or title of a page.

In the first paragraph of this post, write a direct response in a short, concise manner. After that, another sentence for further clarification can't hurt.

Then write the rest of the post, filling in all the details, and adding rich elements like images and charts.

Providing an introduction as a response to the answer the assistant will read can go a long way toward appearing as an audio response.

If you want to be seen as the most authoritative answer on the internet, and you want your voice assistant to give your answer as the best answer, there are other things you can do.

For example, you can add blog post structured data to your post to help Google understand your content.

Structured data is also especially useful for products and recipes. This markup will help Google understand the finer points of the page you want to promote, and your content can appear in voice search.

Always remember the fact that people tend to find voice using longer and more natural sentences. For this reason, you should research these long-tail keywords and use them in your content.

Based on how specific these keywords are, you should be able to detect the personality of this content. Who are they and what next?

Knowing your audience will help you craft content, and that little extra thought can make a big difference in getting the desired voice search response.

Improve local business knowledge

Then there are all the local searchers who want to find a place like yours in their area or want to know who you are and learn more about you.

In these cases, you want to appear in the local map pack when people search for “pizza places near me.”

You also want the voice assistant to provide the correct information when people ask for “Company X hours” or “Y business address.”

There are many things I could say here.

One is that appearing in local map packs, whether through voice search or traditional search, is about maximizing your business profile on Google.

That means hours, addresses, photos, services, website link - and reviews, reviews, reviews!

One sure way to succeed as a local business is to ask for good reviews from happy customers.

This helps people know that they will have a good experience with your company. It also shows Google that this is a business that people find useful, so it will continue to show it to searchers.

Also, since mobile devices are where voice searches take place, make sure you optimize the mobile version of your website so that anyone who wants to learn more can have a good experience on your site.

Now is the time to think about voice search.

Voice search isn't a new technology, but it's a convenient way to get answers to questions, and it's increasingly popular — and if you haven't gotten better at it, now is the time.

Now, none of this is to say that showing up in voice search is easy.

Many of your competitors are probably working on the same thing.

But if you focus closely on your keyword choices, purpose, and ideal user persona, you give your business the best chance of exposing itself through thriving organic search technology.