Voice Search Marketing: Optimize Content for Voice Queries
Last update: 2 September 2024 at 04:29 pm
4.50/5According to recent data, more than 50% of adults worldwide use voice search on a daily basis. We are talking about more than 1 billion voice searches per month. It’s a number that’s only expected to grow in the coming years, and it’s a clear indicator that your business or organization needs to invest time and resources in developing and implementing voice search marketing.
Think about how many times a day you speak to Alexa, Siri, Cortana, or any other virtual assistant you may have. As the days go by, you probably find yourself talking to them more and more. Simply because they make it easy and fast to find answers to questions ranging from what time it is to understanding quantum computing.
Let’s begin our journey into the world of voice search optimization.
What Is Voice Search in Marketing?
Voice search marketing is the process of optimizing your website’s content to appear in voice search results. These results are basically the answers that Google Assistant, Siri, or Alexa gives you, and in most cases are taken from Google’s featured search snippets.
What Is an Example of a Voice Search for SEO?
The best example we can give you of voice search is to encourage you to try it.
Use your phone, Alexa, or any device that has a virtual assistant and ask it a question. It can be something like, “Alexa, what is the best laptop I can buy for a high school student?” Take note of her recommendation.
Then go to your phone or computer and type Google: “best laptop for high school students”. Compare the two results.
Using this specific question, Siri showed me an article from TechRadar, “The best student laptops in 2024: top laptops for college and school. And Google did the same thing, but of course I had to go to my phone, open the web browser, go to Google, and type in my search. Voice search makes this process easier, and it only takes a few seconds to ask the question and get an answer.
Devices and Platforms that Use Voice Search
To build an effective voice search strategy, you must first understand the different technologies available in the market that make it possible. These are:
- Google Assistant has a 92.9% accuracy rate and relies on Google and Google my Business to answer user questions.
- Apple’s Siri has an accuracy rate of 83.1% and uses Google, Apple Maps and Yelp to provide customers with information on their questions.
- Amazon’s Alexa has a 79.8% accuracy rate and works with information from Bing, Yelp and Yext to provide answers.
Your strategy will vary depending on which voice assistant your target audience uses the most.
Is Voice Search the Future of SEO?
Voice search is already a big part of SEO. Every day we see more and more people taking advantage of voice assistants, forcing businesses to take their SEO efforts one step further and include voice search optimization.
More importantly, this adoption is only expected to grow as users spend more time on mobile devices and voice search makes it easier for them to find what they’re looking for.
If you want to stand out from the competition and capture more market share, it’s time to dedicate resources, budget, and a team to help you implement the best practices that will help position your brand for voice results.
Voice Search Marketing Statistics
A great way to understand the impact of voice search in today’s business world is to take a look at recent statistics on its usage, consumer preferences, and trends.
- Asking questions without typing is one of the top 3 reasons consumers buy a smart speaker (Edison Research)
- The top 3 devices where people use their voice assistants are: smartphones (56%), smart speakers (35%), and TVs (34%) (Edison Research)
- 30% of internet users aged 16-64 worldwide use voice assistants on a weekly basis (DataReportal)
- On average, more men than women use voice assistants at least once a week (DataReportal)
- The average voice search results page takes 4.6 seconds to load (Backlinko)
- 162.7 million Americans will use voice assistants by 2027, up from 149.1 million in 2024 (eMarketer)
- About 4 in 10 U.S. consumers expect “voice technology to be as good as talking to a human” in less than 5 years (PYMNTS)
Benefits of Voice Search Optimization
As you can deduce from what you have read so far, voice search marketing comes with a number of benefits that can have a huge impact on your traffic, conversions and sales numbers.
With over 1 billion voice searches happening every month, the fact that your brand shows up in these results allows you to reach a whole new audience, attract them to your website, nurture them, and convert them into customers.
When you optimize your site for voice search, you also improve the user experience by allowing them to quickly find the information they need without having to spend a lot of time clicking and searching through your site. They simply ask the question to Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant and expect an answer within milliseconds.
And this whole optimization process also has a positive impact on your overall page ranking in search engines, especially Google. Helping your site move up the search engine results pages and enjoy the many benefits that come with it.
How To Optimize for Voice Search in Digital Marketing?
That said, let’s take a look at the different actions you should take to increase your brand’s chances of appearing in voice search results. Throughout this process, it is important to keep in mind that voice search is different from regular search. In the former, people tend to ask Siri, Alexa, or any other assistant complete sentences. But when they type a query into Google, they use shorter phrases.
For example, in a voice search, you would ask “Siri, what are the best sushi restaurants near me,” whereas in a text search, you would probably type something like “best sushi restaurants near me”. See the difference?
Remember, if you don’t have the team, time, or skills to handle this, then it’s best to rely on a specialized agency that has the experience and requirements to design and implement a successful voice search strategy.
As you get started, keep these relevant insights in mind:
- Sites with high domain and link authority tend to rank best in voice search (Backlinko)
- The average voice search result is only 29 words (Backlinko)
- 40.7% of all voice search responses are pulled from a featured snippet (Backlinko)
- Google voice search results pages have an average of 2,312 words (Backlinko)
Research and Target Keywords for Voice Search
The first thing you want to work on is voice search keyword research. This means looking for long-tail keywords and using them in either a conversational or question format.
For example, if your long-tail keyword is “running shoes for flat feet,” you can turn it into a question like “what are the best running shoes for flat feet?” This way, you’re generating content around the specific searches that users are making through voice assistants.
To conduct keyword research, we highly recommend using tools like Google Keyword Planner, Soovle, Moz, or Ahrefs. They will all help you understand the search volume and difficulty for each keyword so you can determine which ones to work with. Try to target those that have at least over 100 searches per month and a keyword difficulty below 70. That’s the sweet spot between searches and competition.
Analyze Google’s Results Page for Those Keywords
Once you have your list of question or conversation keywords, it’s a good idea to go to Google and do a quick search on each one. You want to focus on mapping the types of content and information that share the first results on the search page. Also, you need to focus on the snippets that show up, those are the ones that generate the most voice responses.
This will make it easier for you to understand the types of content you need to create. Whether it’s a list type of post, a step-by-step, a how-to, or just quick answers to common questions.
We encourage you to take the time to complete this step. Pay close attention to the details and take notes. Your insights will be the key to your voice search marketing success.
Create Content With Conversational Language
By now, you should have a clear understanding of the keywords you want to use and the type of content you want to create. It’s time to create your content calendar, where you’ll determine the following
- Title
- Keyword
- Keyword difficulty
- Monthly search volume
- Type of content
- The author
- Due date
- Content length
This document allows everyone on your team to be on the same page and keep track of what’s going on.
Once you start writing, consider the following recommendations:
- Always write in a way that is consistent with how your users search with voice. This will increase your chances of being shared with voice assistants.
- Weave your keywords naturally into your text.
- Answer your audience’s questions concisely.
- Include a FAQ section in blogs or content where you can’t naturally include your voice search keywords.
Optimize your Website Content
Then you want to audit the existing content of your website pages and optimize it, which will be highly beneficial for voice search marketing.
To perform the audit, you can either hire an SEO agency or do it yourself. If you decide to do the latter, we recommend that you consider tools such as SEOptimer, Small SEO Tools, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs or SE Ranking. Before subscribing to any of these, make sure it provides multiple SEO-related metrics (page speed, traffic, user behavior, keyword saturation), includes actionable tips to improve your ranking, and is a reputable software in the industry.
Use the results of the audit to determine which pages you need to prioritize and optimize for voice search. Your optimization process must include
- Editing your content for a conversational tone that matches the user’s search intent.
- Adding schema markup so that search engines can easily understand and rank your content.
- Prioritizing mobile optimization.
- Adding a FAQ page.
- Incorporating voice search keywords naturally and following on-page SEO best practices.
- Using local SEO best practices to attract voice search users looking for solutions near or in their area.
Pay Close Attention to Technical SEO
At the same time, you want your website team to pay close attention to technical SEO best practices and implement them on your site. They will provide a better user experience for your visitors and entice them to stay engaged with your content.
Some action items they need to take include
- Design a logical and user-friendly site architecture.
- Submitting your Sitemap to Google.
- Managing duplicate content and implementing canonical tags.
- Adding an SSL certificate.
- Ensuring your site is mobile responsive.
- Use breadcrumbs.
- Optimizing for Core Web Vitals.
- Implementing schema markup.
- Fixing broken pages.
Update Your Contact Information
It’s very important that you spend time verifying your business contact information, both on your website and in online listings.
Make sure your business name, address, phone number, and email are displayed on a contact page and in the universal footer of your site. If it’s not there, add it as soon as possible. These are the main places that Google and voice assistants check to answer their users’ questions.
Track and Monitor Performance
All of these efforts will take time to have an impact on your search engine rankings, but you will want to monitor their performance as soon as you begin implementing them. That way, you can see which ones are having a positive impact and which are not, and make the necessary changes to achieve your voice search goals.
The most important KPI to monitor is keyword ranking. It shows which keywords you are currently ranking for and which are driving more traffic and conversions. You can use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to monitor your ranking and competitors.
Conclusion
Winning more customers requires more than just having great products or services. You have to tell the world that they exist and how they help them solve their pain points. While there are many different ways to do this, voice search marketing is one that you cannot ignore.
It’s designed to help you position your brand, especially in voice responses from voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant.
The key to success is being able to create direct content that answers your audience’s frequently asked questions, optimized around conversational or question-based keywords. While this may seem like a relatively simple process, it’s filled with details that only someone with experience can successfully navigate. Our recommendation is to hire an expert or work with an agency that specializes in SEO. If you’re new to the digital world, consider working with a digital marketing concultant in Dubai or another city in the world first.
