How Voice Search Affects Keyword Phrases
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Voice search is much easier than typing into a small phone keyboard to find what your seeking. Today we find ourselves asking, “Siri, where is the nearest Mexican food restaurant?” This is very different than taking your phone, opening your internet app and typing in “Mexican food”. Voice search has now changed how businesses approach their Search Engine Optimization strategies.
As online marketers, over the past twenty years, we’ve been conditioned to build and optimize websites to be found by search engines using short, meaningful keyword phrases. The transition to more and more voice search dramatically changes our approach to effectively build and optimize websites for how users are searching online. By contrast to short keyword phrases, the use of voice search offers longer sentences, conversational tone, and most importantly, user intent. The keyword phrases tell the search engine “what” is being searched; today with voice search we now include the “why” or “how” of the user’s intent (reasons) for the search.
Ensure your website is hosted securely. Google provides preferential ranking to websites that are hosted securely – especially in their results pages for voice searches.
Make your website as fast as you can. Slower websites are automatically ranked lower than fast working websites. Additionally, many voice searches are performed on mobile devices, and users of mobile devices are even more impatient waiting for results as compared to PC users. Most voice search results pages load 50% faster than traditional search engine results pages.
Dust off your old FAQ page. Prior to the explosion of blogging, all websites used to have and FAQ page. The natural language of questions and answers serves the voice search user well. Update your FAQ page to include all the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How questions and answers that you can offer to your customers and prospects.
Refresh all of your website content. Make sure your website content is easy to read and is conversational. Additionally, remove big words and industry jargon. Writing simply and clearly will ultimately be more easily matched with voice search queries.
And … as always, if you need help updating your website for voice search results … give Wendy a call!
