Once a fad, voice search usage has grown quickly. According to Perficient, 55% of users use voice search on a smartphone to ask questions. Its popularity is thanks to the ease and convenience of speaking to a voice assistant over typing.
The future of online searches is voice and it’s important for home builders to capitalize on this trend by including voice search optimization in their SEO strategy.
What is voice search?
In short, voice search, also called voice-enabled, is the action of conducting an internet search through a voice command. Voice search is often used with compatible devices like smartphones, smart speakers, and other connected devices. These are commonly known as digital voice assistants.
How does voice search work?
Voice search has evolved from simple recognition to a more sophisticated understanding. Digital voice assistants transcribe human speech into text, analyzing and detecting questions and commands before returning relevant information, either by speaking back to the user or performing the command.
Digital voice assistants pull their information from many different their-party sources like search engines (mostly Google), Google and Apple Maps, and other major websites like Wikipedia.
Strategies for optimizing for voice search
Here are a few quick strategies to focus your voice search optimization strategy around:
Focus on conversational language and long-tail keywords.
The main characteristic of voice search is its conversational tone. Because it relies on natural language, queries tend to be longer and more conversational than traditional searches. Here’s where understanding search intent is crucial. Voice searches are usually asked in the form of a question so it’s important to anticipate the type of questions users are asking while using voice search. You can start your keyword phrase research by using a tool like Answer the Public.
Incorporate structured data
Structured data helps search engines understand the content on your website. Crawlers use the structured data (or schema markup) to determine a page’s relevance and rank in search results. Speakable markup was designed specifically for voice search answers. It allows you to identify parts of your content that allows search engines to quickly identify content to playback to users.
Optimize your Google My Business listing
Many virtual assistants turn to Google My Business listings when looking for information on local businesses. Make sure your Google My Business listing contains the correct information and includes additional information like business hours, website URL, description, and other contact information.
It’s important to note that not all virtual assistants use the same search engine. Be sure to optimize your local listings on other sites like Bing and Yelp to improve your opportunities to appear.
Have a mobile-friendly website
The majority of voice searches happen on mobile devices so your website must be mobile-friendly. In order to provide an amazing mobile user experience, your website needs to load quickly, contain relevant information, is user-friendly, and provides the right information your users are looking for.
It’s time to have a comprehensive SEO strategy that includes voice search optimization. If you need help capturing the power of voice search, we can help. We can create an SEO strategy to help you be found, whether through a voice search or traditional search. Give us a call to schedule a demo today.