If you haven’t heard already, voice search is the next big thing in the SEO world that has begun to disrupt the whole industry including small and big businesses.  With smart speakers and virtual assistants making their way into our daily lives, they have started to change the way we live and search for information on the internet. It went as far as the prediction of over half of searches via done by voice search in 2020.

While changing the way of how marketers approach SEO, these voice assistants are also making life easier for their users. According to eMarketer, 35.8% of the millennials use these assistants at least once a month. While some of these searches are made to find local information, most of these users use voice search to shop online.

Image Source: www.sayonetech.com

As people are looking for ways to get information faster and more efficiently, voice search provides solutions to users and helps businesses get found easier. So the usage of voice search is growing rapidly as more people prefer speaking to their devices rather than typing in the words. And this functionality is not limited to one specific demographic as users from any age group use voice search to find information using different types of smart devices. This leads to more business owners to optimize their websites to work in harmony with voice research and improve their SEO.

Source: The Next Scoup 

If you already have an SEO strategy in place, it’s time to integrate voice search efforts to increase your traffic and reach. Both B2B and B2C companies can get benefits from using voice search optimization strategy and here we list some of them:

Increases website traffic

It’s the most undeniable benefit as voice search optimization will directly improve your website traffic by helping your website get found easily and rank higher in the search engines. It also helps improve the user experience as your web pages will provide exact answers that users are searching for and in a more efficient way. Also, it helps with analyzing your website data as Google Analytics shows which queries originated from a voice search () so you can see which pages work better and optimize other pages accordingly.

Raises brand awareness and visibility

By optimizing your pages for voice search, your business will be on the result page on any voice search query and most likely to be ahead of your competitor’s pages. So users will visit your page rather than any of your competitors’ and even if they haven’t heard about your business before, by providing an answer to their problem you’ll create a positive perception. And also they will think of your business next time they look for a similar solution.

Brings more store visits

Voice search has been used mainly for local searches such as searching for a nearby restaurant or nearby pharmacy, so it’s a great way to bring more customers to your stores. Users who are using voice search are more likely to find instant answers and make purchases right away. Hence you’ll increase your chances of getting more customers to your business by simply being on the results pages. Make sure to include information such as address, working hours, recent photos, etc to especially your Google Business listings to increase the number of visits.

The disruption in technology provides unique opportunities for businesses to reach their potential customers. And with these technological changes, how we search and find information will continue to evolve. So it’s safe to say that voice search will increasingly continue to bring faster answers to users looking for information “on the go”. As it changes how we connect and communicate with our audience, businesses should be ready to adapt to these developments to meet changing user behaviour.

If you want to find out how you can implement voice search optimization to your SEO strategy, get in touch with us. We are happy to have a no-obligation chat with you to explore your options.

About the Author

Hande is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur, Principal of WSI London, founder of Quattro Business Consulting, co-founder of Think Neuro and Buddy Performance. She is independent Board Member in verous companies and institutions. She has studied Industrial Engineering, has worked with 200 clients from different parts of the world and she has 20 years of consulting experience.