Voice Search - Are You Ready for the Voice Revolution?

We believe that voice search is changing digital marketing for the better.  However, the way content is written needs to be clearly developed to resonate with both text and voice searches.

Voice search uses conversational language, places great emphasis of featured snippets and has increased the importance of informative and authoritative content.

These key differences mean that marketers now face these voice search challenges :

• Voice search will increase the value of First result in search engines

Only the first result is read out in voice search. Second is first looser, therefore competing for voice search dominance is even more competitive. Typically the result that is read out in response to a voice search is the featured snippet, not simply the first listed result. 

• What questions are your audience asking?

Search queries from voice are longer, so optimising for longer search queries rather than purely keywords is important. Consideration needs to be paid to the questions your customers are asking your business and then create an informative page on your website that answers those specific search queries.

• Structured website content - Schema.org is vital

To successfully rank a website page, search engines must understand the page data.  This data is delivered primarily by structured data as defined by the schema.org standard. This is the system used to mark-up content on a web page, which then enables search engines to understand the context of the text on the page. By implementing schema.org you will help search engines to identify information on your website pages, increasing your chances of ranking for voice search results.

• Local Search & Mobile

Voice search is used in many geographically specific searches, for queries like ‘find a coffee shop near me.’ If your business relies on local customers, then it is important to be found when people are asking for the product or service you sell. Localised search results come from Google My Business and Bing Places for Business, so it is important to ensure that your business listings are optimised.

• Misspelling & mispronunciation

Whilst voice search word accuracy rate is 95%, it is still not 100%. If your brand name is difficult to say then changing it just to work better for voice search probably isn’t an option, but it is worth bearing in mind when you develop new products. Is the new product easy to pronounce? If it is then it will be easier to be found via voice search.