How does Voice Search influence SEO?
Voice search is increasingly becoming an alternative to the classic search query via text input. The technology is very convenient for users, and it is gaining more and more momentum thanks to the ever-increasing proliferation of smartphones, tablets and smart speakers.
Instead of laboriously typing in a question, it is simply spoken and the device takes care of the rest. For the user, this is wonderfully simple and straightforward, but what does voice search mean for SEO? Do companies now have to completely rethink their online presence? How does voice search affect SEO measures? Answers to these and many other questions about this topic await you in the following article.
What is Voice Search?
As the name suggests, it is voice-driven search queries. So the user no longer types in his query, but just speaks it out and then gets the search results delivered. Since voice control is very convenient for the user, it is becoming increasingly popular, and experts believe that this trend will continue to grow. It is, therefore, foreseeable that Voice Search will play an increasingly important role for SEO and this should not be ignored.
What is Voice Search used for?
If you want to include Voice Search in your SEO strategy, then you need to know when and for what users use it. As a rule, voice control is used whenever it is too inconvenient to operate the device by hand — i.e. primarily when the user is on the move.
Voice control is then used to play music, call a contact or ask a question. These are often knowledge questions that arise in the course of a conversation with a friend, for example, but there are also queries that are of great interest such as directions, company information, and shopping queries. And this is exactly where you can start with your SEO strategy to provide users with the information and content they are looking for. The only question is — how do you do it?
Voice Search: What is important to consider for SEO?
When it comes to SEO and voice search, you should pay particular attention to user behavior. Currently, voice search is mainly used to get orientation, often locally limited.
So, for example, the user might be looking for the nearest clothing or electronics store, or a store where they can find a product they are looking for. The most frequent queries therefore relate to directions and company information such as address or opening hours. In addition, there are requests for online shopping.
If you want to do well in voice search, make sure your site offers basic information about your business, such as the address, opening hours, and the like. Also, check which voice assistant your customers primarily use, because not all voice assistants use the same search engine. While Google Assistant and Siri (Apple) rely on Google Search, Alexa (Amazon) and Cortana (Microsoft) work with Bing. Accordingly, you should direct your measures to the search engine that most frequently processes search queries relevant to you.
In addition, you need to keep in mind that queries themselves change as a result of Voice Search. They become longer and sound more natural; moreover, as already mentioned, the queries often have a local reference.
More tips for SEO content
So how can the insights from the previous paragraph be put into practice? First of all, it’s important to know your target audience and find out as many user questions as possible. Because only if you know who is searching and what is being searched for, you can design the content of your site to contain the appropriate answers for Voice Search.
Also, make sure to include important questions already in the headline and in the meta information. A good structuring of the content, for example with H2 to H5 headings, also helps to make your content more accessible for Voice Search.
The ‘spoken’ data element announced by Google should also be a valuable help for search engine optimization for voice search. An FAQ page that clarifies the most important questions about your company, services and offerings is a veritable “treasure trove” of information for voice search and is therefore just as highly recommended.
When it comes to keywords, you should focus primarily on long-tail keywords, as these are much more in line with natural language usage, and thus also the queries that are made via voice search.
Voice search may not have replaced normal search queries yet, but it is definitely an area with enormous growth, which is accordingly also of great interest for marketing. Since many of the measures benefit both voice search SEO and normal search engine optimization, it is worthwhile to include this area in the SEO strategy, as you will benefit immediately, and at the same time prepare yourself for future developments.
