How to optimize your website for voice search
Voice Search Trends: Is Your Business Ready?
When Google launched the iPhone voice search app in 2008, it was far from perfect. Over the years, speech-activated technology has become much more accurate and human-like. Statistics show that Google’s English recognition accuracy rate is now over 95%.
People want instant solutions when they search for something online.
While typing a query in a search bar is quick, simply speaking on your device and getting the same results is even faster. On average, a person can write about 40 words per minute and speak about 150 words per minute.
To test a spoken search, you can activate your phone’s assistant (Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, for example). Or try it online: click on the microphone icon to the right of the Google search bar, to the left of the magnifying glass.
You will be asked to “Speak Now” and you will see the results appear after you have made your request.
What Voice Search Means for Your Business
If you are a small business owner, it’s a good idea to start thinking about ways to optimize your website for voice search.
Many consumers already use it to find what they are looking for, and according to ComScore, 50% of searches will be done this way by 2020.
Here’s how to make it work for your business:
Think in phrases, not keywords. When we type something in the search bar, we tend to be brief, like “Fruit Servings from the Canadian Food Guide.”
However, when we speak to a device, we use a conversational tone, so it would be more like “How many servings of fruit per day does the Food Guide to Canada recommend?” Before optimizing your site, research the long-tail keywords someone might use to find your products or services.
Stay local. Voice-related mobile searches are three times more likely to be done locally. Use your keyword placement in your site content, and don’t forget to keep your Google My Business page up to date.
If you have accolades or awards, include them too – users often search for the “best” or “top” products or services in the area.
Be too informative. A virtual assistant pulls information from the internet, so you need to make sure that a lot of information is available.
Keep your website, Google My Business, Yelp, and other third-party sites up-to-date with contact information, hours of operation, location, and menu.
However, that’s just the basics. Dive Even Deeper: Does Your Business Accept American Express? Does your boutique sell local designer clothes? Is your business a good place to take kids, pets, or a date?
The more you can post, the more questions you can answer. Creating an FAQ page is a great way to provide relevant information to both writers and speakers.
Accelerate. The loading time of your mobile page is important. The average spoken search results page loads almost twice as fast as a web page, so you’ll have to keep up if you want to get noticed.
Google also includes page speed as a ranking factor, so faster is always better. Check the speed of your site.
It will become increasingly relevant, and necessary, to make it easier for customers to “talk” to your company. Instead of waiting for your competitors to catch up and beat you, start working on optimizing your site now.
