When you think of products like Siri, Alexa, Google Home, Cortana, or similar ones, what immediately comes to mind? For a lot of people, it’s smart home technology and the convenience it has. Most of these, like Google and Siri, can also be accessed simply from a phone, so you don’t even need to be home. But generally, they’re all about making your experience seamless and convenient. Chances are, you’ve used one of these before at one point, maybe when it was just a new concept and you were having fun with it, or maybe you use this technology regularly since it’s a mini electronic assistant.
You can order items, buy takeout, and even search online for random questions that come to your head. But think about that for a moment: you can buy items, and you can search for things; you don’t have to click any buttons, everything is hands-free, and you just use your voice. Isn’t that powerful? It absolutely is! Voice search isn’t going away, and you can use this for your business, specifically to boost SEO! So, here’s everything you need to know!
There’s a Focus on Conversational Keywords
Chances are, you talk differently than you type, right? This is true especially when it comes to researching; most people are like this: the keywords they search for are usually different (and usually longer) than when they type something into a search bar. Plus, you need to keep in mind that voice searches are inherently more conversational and natural compared to typed queries. When optimizing for voice search, focus on incorporating conversational keywords and long-tail phrases. You may even want to go ahead and consider how users would phrase questions in everyday conversation and integrate those queries into your content. Honestly, if you have a niche business, then this can actually be super beneficial for you!
Locality is Major
Not always, but oftentimes, when someone uses their voice assistant, there’s a higher chance for a local search, like restaurants, ordering food, looking up info for local businesses, and maybe even local events. With that said, you should also keep in mind that these voice assistants also have a local intent to them; just about all of them are programmed to focus on your locality, so if you’re a business owner who specifically wants to focus on your locality then this could help a lot. While yes, opting for SEO firm services is still going to be crucial, it will also help you out a lot if you opt for this, too!
So, just do those basic things all local-oriented businesses need to do, such as ensuring your business information is consistently updated across online platforms and leveraging local SEO strategies to enhance your visibility in local search results. This includes creating and optimizing your Google My Business listing. It’s small, and it’s fairly basic, but if you’re specifically focusing on your local area, then this can actually be incredibly beneficial.
Better Incentive to Update FAQs
How often do you update your FAQs? For a lot of small businesses, it might be no more than once a year, and even that can be seen as pretty generous. Every business owner knows that FAQs are important for customers, but at the same time, there’s the idea that everything is so easily explained that there’s no need to update it unless something else about the business changes.
So, with that said, voice search does help create the incentive for businesses to update their FAQ pages more regularly and also helps them ensure they’re SEO friendly, too. Creating FAQ pages that address common queries in a conversational tone not only enhances your voice search visibility but also improves the overall user experience.
More Need to Refresh Content
Alright, so this is going to piggyback on what was said above, but it’s not just FAQs that need to be updated more often, but content too. So, for the most part, businesses know this when it comes to SEO, all old pieces of content are always going to benefit from a nice refresh, but when you refresh these, if they offer a more conversational tone, then this is going to immensely help get voice assistants to track these for queries. Also, something else that needs to be pointed out is the fact that voice search algorithms favor fresh and relevant information.
If you think about it, voice search SEO is a give-and-take relationship that, at the end of the day, gives a lot and more. Sure, there’s some work that goes into it, such as changing your tone, refreshing content (which is needed anyway for SEO), and focusing on locality, but all of these things are vital anyway for SEO. You need to remember that SEO, no matter what type, is always focused on the long term, and with voice assistants not going anywhere anytime soon (if ever), you can absolutely count on these boosting your small business.