If you’re not already targeting voice search through your website, now is the time to start implementing this valuable method for gaining more exposure. With the rise of smart speakers and voice-enabled devices, more and more people are using voice search to find information online.
And since most voice searches are in the form of questions, this presents a unique opportunity for businesses to connect with their target audience.
As the world becomes more and more digital, it’s no surprise that voice search is on the rise. Forecasts suggest that by 2024, the number of digital voice assistants will reach 8.4 billion units. And with the release of smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home, as well as the popularity of voice-activated assistants like Siri and Cortana, it’s not hard to see why.
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So how can website owners take the most from this opportunity?
The global smart speaker market is continuing its upward trend, reaching 150 million units in 2020. As a result, optimising a website for voice search is a smart move. As voice search becomes more and more popular, it’s important to make sure your website is optimised for this type of search.
Those website owners who set up voice search in a website can gain a competitive edge and increase the customer base by being returned for voice-based search queries.
The number of households that own smart speakers is expected to climb even higher in the next few years, with a 58% projection likely by 2025. As voice-based search continues to grow in popularity, it’s essential to ensure that your content is voice search friendly. So how do you achieve this?
The global smart speaker market is continuing its upward trend, reaching 150 million units in 2020. As a result, optimising a website for voice search is a smart move. As voice search becomes more and more popular, it’s important to make sure your website is optimised for this type of search.
Those website owners who set up voice search in a website can gain a competitive edge and increase the customer base by being returned for voice-based search queries.
The number of households that own smart speakers is expected to climb even higher in the next few years, with a 58% projection likely by 2025. As voice-based search continues to grow in popularity, it’s essential to ensure that your content is voice search friendly. So how do you achieve this?
Money talks
Voice search is becoming increasingly popular, not just for its convenience but also for its potential to improve revenue. Here’s a look at how businesses are using voice search to their advantage.
As people become more comfortable with voice search tools like Siri, Cortana, and Alexa, they’re using them more and more often. And that’s good news for businesses.
Voice search is an incredibly convenient way to find information, and it’s only going to become more popular as the technology improves. But businesses are also finding that voice search can be a powerful tool for driving sales and revenue.
In 2030, the global AI-based and voice recognition market should reach €27.3 billion (insightSLICE)
There are several ways businesses can incorporate voice search to their advantage. Here are four ways to do this.
Steps to get voice search on your website
1. Use natural language. When people use voice search, they often use natural, conversational language. Make sure your content reflects this. By ensuring that your content is clear, and concise and includes a question and answer-based content can make it more likely that your site will appear in results as a featured snippet. Think about the questions people might ask. Voice search is often used to ask questions, so make sure your content includes FAQs or question-based sections.
2. Featured snippets are summaries of online content that are displayed prominently on a search engine results page (SERP). Google will pull the most relevant content on your page and call it out in a box on the search results page. Featured snippets typically appear above the regular organic search results and can include text, images, or video. Google featured snippets are designed to give users the information they’re looking for as quickly and easily as possible. To determine which content to feature, Google looks at the quality and relevance of the page content, as well as how well it aligns with the user’s search query. Featured snippets can be extremely valuable for businesses and website owners, as they can help to increase organic traffic and click-through rates.
3. Optimise for mobile. More and more people are using voice search on their mobile devices, so it’s important to make sure your website is optimised for mobile.
4. Make sure your website is superfast as this impacts voice search results. It’s a fact that fast websites are integral to voice search. Users won’t hang around if the answer they want takes time to load on a mobile website. Search engines want to deliver the best result for a given search term and speed is part of the equation with search engine algorithms.
Understanding user intent
Searching for something online usually starts with a question or keywords related to what the person needs. For website owners and digital marketers, it’s important to understand what types of searches are being made in order to create compelling content that meets the needs of users.
As you develop website authority and improve website speed, you will be better able to rank for searcher intent. However, it all starts with understanding what searchers are looking for and how to give it to them.
What are your customers looking for when they visit your website? If you’re not sure, you’re not alone. Many business owners and digital marketers struggle to understand what searchers are looking for. In order to create compelling content that meets the needs of users, it’s important to first understand their intent.
There are four main types of searcher intent: informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional. Each type of search is looking for something different, so it’s important to understand what your customers are looking for before you can give it to them.
Informational searches are made when the person is looking for information on a topic. They may not be ready to buy anything yet, but they want to learn more about a subject. Navigational searches are made when the person is looking for a specific website or web page. Commercial searches are made when the person is interested in buying something. Transactional searches are made when the person is ready to buy something and is looking for a specific product or service.
If you want to rank for searcher intent from voice search, you need to understand what your customers are looking for and give them the content they need.
Forecasts suggest that by 2024, the number of digital voice assistants will reach 8.4 billion units – a number higher than the world’s population.
Fast websites and the relevance to voice search.
Voice search is one of the hottest trends in search engine optimization right now. And for good reason – with hands-free devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home becoming more popular, it’s only natural that people are using voice search more and more to find information online.
But what many people don’t realize is that website speed and loading times have a direct bearing on voice search. Simply put, the faster your website is, the more likely it is to show up in voice search results. That’s because voice search relies on artificial intelligence to deliver results, and one of the key factors that AI takes into account is how long it takes a website to load. So if you want to make sure your website shows up in voice search results, you need to make sure it’s fast and easy to use.
Fortunately, there are several things you can do to improve your website’s speed, including optimizing images, reducing redirects, and minifying code.
Website hosting is another factor that affects speed. Cloud-based website hosting does tend to do better in delivering performance.
By taking these steps, you can ensure that your website is voice search-friendly and that you’re getting the most out of this growing trend.
Read more here on improving website speed – https://webmaintenance.ie/improve-website-speed/
The first five seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates. (Portent, 2019)
Source: Statista.com
What are featured snippets?
Featured snippets are short blocks of text that appear below the main search results. They provide quick answers to common questions and can help boost your website’s click-through rate as well as voice search results and increased website exposure.
When you perform a search on a search engine, you’ll typically see a list of results that includes a title, URL, and description for each page. This information is known as a snippet. The snippet generally appears beneath the title of the page in the search results. The purpose of the snippet is to give you an idea of what the page is about and whether it’s relevant to your search query.
The snippet description usually contains keywords that match the terms you entered into the search box. These keywords are typically highlighted in bold so that they stand out. When you’re reviewing the search results, the snippets can be helpful in determining which pages are most relevant to your needs. So what featured snippets are is just extra information beside or below a listing. This makes a listing stand out more and increases the chances of being clicked on. In addition, as noted in this article voice search results pull information from featured snippets.
A high percentage of voice search results are pulled from featured snippets, which are a special type of search result that appears at the top of the SERP. These results are designed to give users quick and relevant information in response to their query. In order to be eligible for a featured snippet, your content must be well-optimized and relevant to the user’s query. In addition, your content must be placed in a prominent location on the SERP, such as at the top of the page. If your content meets all of these criteria, there’s a good chance it will be selected as a featured snippet, and subsequently, generate voice search traffic.
To create the optimal chance of having your website featured with additional snippets in Google you need to use a special kind of code called schema-rich snippets. Structuring your data using schema markup tells search engines how to interpret your content. By adding schema markup to your website, you can help improve your voice search ranking and ensure that your website appears in more quick answer boxes.
Don’t worry if this sounds complicated, there are plugins such as Rank Math that can handle the schema set up effortlessly. We here at Web Maintenance. ie can help with this.
50% of voice search results pull information from featured snippets.
70% of voice answers occupied a search engine results page (SERP) feature, like the featured snippet.
Snippets are the key to driving organic traffic to your website. A snippet is a single search result in a set of search results and generally consists of a title, a URL and a description of the page. The content of a snippet matches parts of the search query and you’ll see your keyword highlighted in the snippet description. optimizing your snippets can have a significant impact on your organic traffic. Here are some tips for optimizing your snippets:
– Use keyword-rich titles that accurately describe the content of the page.
– Include targeted keywords in the URL.
– Write concise, scannable descriptions that include targeted keywords.
– Use Schema markup to enhance your snippets.
By following these tips, you can ensure that your snippets are optimized for maximum visibility and click-through rate, which will result in more organic traffic to your website.
List of schema types:
Article
Book
Course
Dataset
Event
FAQ
FactCheck
HowTo
Job Posting
Movie
Music
Person
Product
Recipe
Restaurant
Service
Software
Video
What are featured snippets?
With the rise of smart speakers and voice-enabled devices, more and more people are using voice search to find local businesses. And since local searches typically have a higher conversion rate than non-local searches, it’s important to make sure your business is visible in local search results.
There are a few things you can do to optimize your site for voice search, including using long-tail keywords, optimizing your site for mobile devices, and claiming your business listing on local directories. By taking these steps, you’ll improve your chances of showing up in local search results and generating more leads.
Using long-tailed keywords that are based on questions is a good strategy since that’s often how people frame voice searches. It also means understanding user intent and what people are looking for when they voice search for a particular term. If you can anticipate the kinds of things people will want to know about a topic, you can ensure that your content is voice search friendly and more likely to be found by searchers
Following these tips will help ensure that your website gets a better chance of showing up in voice search results.
55% of people use voice search to find local businesses.
Fascinating facts.
48% of voice-activated-speaker owners want to be provided with personalized tips and information from brands
According to Capgemini, an estimated 70% of consumers are using voice to shop instead of going to brick-and-mortar stores.
According to Capgemini, an estimated 70% of consumers are using voice to shop instead of going to brick-and-mortar stores.
65% of 25-49-year-olds speak to their voice-enabled devices at least once per day.
Web browsing is still the main feature being used on mobile devices, but voice searching is in second place (Perficient)
Conclusion
For voice search optimisation Use natural language. When people speak to their devices, they use natural, conversational language. This means that you should too! Avoid using jargon or technical terms on your website, and instead opt for plain language that anyone can understand.
Be specific. Just as you would with traditional keyword research, you need to be specific when optimizing for voice search. Long-tail keywords are particularly important here, as they are more likely to match the way people speak.
Optimise for local search. If your business has a physical location, make sure you’re optimizing for local search. This means including your city and county in your titles and meta descriptions, as well as setting up a Google My Business page.
Answer common questions. Think about the questions people are likely to ask about your business, and then make sure you provide clear answers on your website. This could mean creating dedicated pages for FAQs or adding structured data to your site.
Make sure your site is mobile-friendly. Since many people use voice search on their mobile devices, it’s essential to have a responsive website that can be easily accessed on any device.
By following these tips, you can help ensure that your website comes up in more voice searches – and that you’re able to attract new customers as a result.
