“Hey Siri, show me web design agencies near me.”
The new age of searching on the internet is here and it is the era of voice search. Voice search is going to have a lasting impact on how people search for businesses on the internet. Virtual assistants, such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Home, have become commonplace and they are getting smarter every year. This has led to people increasingly using these virtual assistants for their search needs – no matter if it’s a web design service, home service, restaurant, or shopping for an item.
What exactly is Voice Search?
It’s simple, really. People are using virtual assistants to do the searching for them. People are speaking search phrases, rather than typing them. In fact, over 50% *(reference?) of internet users use voice search for all of their web searching needs, from quick look-ups, to product research, to everything in between, voice is becoming the standard way to search for what you’re looking for.
As an aside, we have noted this for a long time through our management of Google Ads. Search term reports have included long-tail searches that are clearly from voice searches for years!
Is Voice Search Critical for Small Business?
You may question if your business really needs to be voice search optimized, or if it’s even necessary for your business. The answer is, undoubtedly, yes it is. Taking a look at the following statistics is a stark revelation as to why.
- 50% of all searches are done by voice as of this year.
- 50% of people use voice search when researching products or services.
- 40% of adults use voice search once per day.
- 22% of all voice searches are for local information.
However, unlike typed searches, voice search requires a bit of strategy in order to really optimize how you appear in results. There are ways to achieve successful voice search optimization.
If you’ve ever typed a search into Google, you’ve more then likely seen a box pop up with your answer. This box is known as the “rich result,” which Google gets the information for from an article. When searching by voice, Google reads the result of this featured snippet as the answer to your search query.
As a local business, you can take advantage of this and build a voice search optimization strategy. The best way to go about this is to add a business schema to your website, increasing your chances of being found through voice search. Though, setting up a voice enabled schema can be a daunting and time consuming task, as you are basically feeding specific vocabulary to search engines to use the data to understand the content of your website.
Voice Search has a massive impact on how consumers research information. One of the easiest ways to improve your rankings and presence on the web is to start developing a voice search optimization strategy today. If you’re looking for assistance in getting started with developing a voice readiness strategy, 3PRIME is here to help.