How to Prepare Your Business for Voice Search

Aug 13, 2018

How to Prepare Your Business for Voice Search

The advent of voice AI assistants like Alexa, Google Home, and the Amazon Echo is changing how consumers search on the web. Around 41% of adults around the world are using their voices to search for things online. Google mobile voice searches like '___ near me now' have grown by 150% in the last two years. Also, voice based searches are 3 times more likely to be about local businesses.

The fact that SEO is different for voice searches means that retail businesses need to re-optimize their content so that they don't miss out potential customers. Here are some tips that will help you to optimise your SEO especially for voice based searches:

1. Claim Your Google My Business Listing

Google has a list of businesses with all types of information about them such as address, hours of operation, type of business etc. Being on Google My Business listings is easy and free, and allows your business to get preference in search results. For eg; if you own a pizza restaurant and you have listed yourself on Google by providing details of your business, your restaurant has high chances of showing up when someone uses voice search to find "pizza restaurants near me".

2. Start Taking Your Blog Seriously

The way people search using voice is different than traditional. People usually use long tailed keywords unlike when they type. For example, while a text search may be "cheap acrylic paint", a voice search may be "where can I buy acrylic paint for cheap?". This means that your blog needs to be embedded for long tail keywords so that they can be easily found on search engines.

Long articles increase the chance of embedding long keywords into your content so that they can be easily found. You can find long tail keywords on Answer the Public for free. You can type the terms relevant to your business and understand how users are using those terms in their searches.

3. Secure Your Website with an SSL Certificate

Google announced in 2014 that they will be giving higher priority to websites with HTTPS prefix and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates while ranking search results. This reflects Google's growing dedication to security in the past four years. You can purchase an SSL certificate for your website from web hosting providers, at a reasonable price or sometimes even for free, depending on your web hosting package.

These certificate and prefix will help you to rank higher on search results done through voice or text. Many of your competitors may not be having a secured websites, so this gives you an edge over many other websites. Hence, take advantage of this tactic especially now, when SSL certificates are so cheap and easy to get.

Voice search is only going to grow in the future. Therefore you should be prepared for this new way of searching online by listing your business, taking your blog's SEO seriously, and getting an SSL certificate.