Why Voice Search SEO Strategies Are Essential

Alongside the huge growth in digital voice assistant users, Google revealed their “near me” searches have increased more than 130% YoY (Year-over-Year). Most of these searches occur from mobile uses, with close to 60% of consumers finding local businesses using voice search. That number is only predicted to grow even further, with 46% of those consumers continuing to use voice search repeatedly to find a local business on a daily basis. With those numbers, it’s safe to say that voice search is the future of SEO for both online and offline businesses. So if you’re wondering how you can optimise your marketing for voice searches, we have 4 SEO tips to help you take advantage of the shift towards voice search and develop your new strategy.

4 SEO Tips To Optimise Your Business For Voice Searches

1. Local SEO

The majority of voice search users are looking locally, in fact they’re actually three times more likely to be searching for local business than your traditional text search users. When you put the numbers aside, it makes perfect sense for people driving or walking around to use voice search to find something in their local area. Local SEO is likely already an essential part of your existing marketing strategy, but there’s always room for improvement. Whilst Local SEO follows traditional digital marketing methods, there appears to be a large neglect from businesses actually using the word local in their SEO strategy, this goes for any keywords relevant to local businesses in your area. So figure out what consumers local to your area are searching for and make it known your business is nearby, with the capacity to meet your demographics needs.

Some ideas on how to optimise your business for Local SEO:

• use phrases popular in your area. or that describe your businesses location
• put “near me” in title tags, meta descriptions, internal links and social media
• use local landmarks in your visual marketing that link your business to the area
• link your business to the area by attaching yourself to other local businesses
• geotag all social posts and make them as specific as possible to your audience

2. Register Your Google My Business Listing

This is absolutely essential to developing a successful voice search and local SEO strategy. Voice searchers find businesses through important information such as contact numbers, addresses, opening hours and the products/services you can provide. This is why it should be your number one priority to ensure Google has the most updated and accurate version of this information. The layout and content of your businesses website does factor into your voice search ranking to an extent, but Google’s access to the most important details of your business through your Google My Business Listing will achieve much greater results when used correctly. Just think about what information Google needs to ensure your business can answer the voice searchers question, it’s a good idea to browse other local businesses that rank highly for ideas.