Voice searches and how to adapt your SEO to them

The rise of voice recognition from the hand of technologies such as Alexa, Cortana or Siri or Google’s implementation of a voice search option has begun to revolutionize the world of SEO. Voice searches affect SEO and use different keywords than written text searches.

Voice searches are increasingly being used, so much so that around 30% of searches performed on Google are already of this type. Virtual assistants such as Alexa are increasingly used: it is estimated that 25% of workers use a virtual assistant, while 71% of all users who use them do so at least once a day. How can we benefit from this new SEO trend?

How voice search affects the way we search

Sometimes, when we write our search we do it in a more robotic way than if we did it by voice. For example, we are in the Embajadores neighborhood in Madrid and we feel like having a pizza for dinner. The text search would be something along the lines of “Pizzeria Embajadores”, while the voice search would be “where is there a pizzeria in the Embajadores area”.

The big difference between the two forms of search is that the text search has been formulated using just the right words, while the voice search has been carried out using the same vocabulary that we would use to ask a friend, turning the search into one that contains a question and in which a long-tail keyword has been used.

How to optimize your SEO strategy for voice searches

As you may have already understood, optimizing your SEO strategy to adapt it to this new trend is necessary and recommended. Below, we will give you a series of tips:

Use conversational keywords

If we seek to adapt to a more “human” way of searching, we will have to include the keywords that we would use to converse with a person, generally we refer to using the corresponding adverbs, for example: where or how. Let’s remember the previous example: the keyword used to perform the search started with “where”.

Focus on local search

Returning to the keyword “where”, this will become very important in voice searches that affect local SEO: many of these will be performed with the objective of finding something, identifying it either by its specific location, such as “Ambassadors” or “near me”.

Adding references to the specific place where your business is located, such as the street, the area or a nearby landmark, will be essential for your positioning in local voice searches. Creating and optimizing your Google My business profile will also be essential for this goal and for your local SEO in general.

Optimize your content

The contents of your website must be optimized to respond to searches in a more human way. Use your headings (H1, H2, etc.) as the first step to answer specific questions. You can include conversational keywords in it and then, in the body of the header, answer the question.

This content can serve as an example of this. The H1 and H2s start with “how to” and follow with how you would phrase a question. Subsequently, the body and H3s provide an answer to the questions posed, satisfying your search intent in wanting to learn about voice searches.

Achieve SERP rankings with rich snippets

Rich snippets are trending in SERPs related to voice search. They usually appear when they answer a question and, as you know, an SEO strategy for voice search answers specific questions. Using a schema markup or structured data is what you should do to achieve rich results.

In addition, Schema at Google has recently added a feature called “speakable” that currently only works in the United States, but is expected to expand internationally. This feature tells Google which content is speakable. To play them as an answer to the question the user has asked in his voice search.

Your website must be responsive

Most voice searches will be performed on non-desktop devices. For your page to appear in such content, it is essential that your website is responsive.

SEO by voice, a growing trend

As you have seen, voice search is already part of the present of SEO. However, its future is even greater and it is very likely that it will end up being the predominant way in the not too distant future. This is an SEO trend that you cannot ignore if you don’t want your strategy to become obsolete.