Is your business ready? Voice search for business owners is now becoming mandatory.
If you want your site to rank well, voice search for business owners is now or prime importance. As voice search gains in popularity, it’s crucial to optimize your site so its absolutely ready for this huge shift in user habit. You will be pleased to know we have this covered for you. : “Hey (Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana) , What is the best local web designer?”
Lets look at 5 future proof ways you can optimise voice search for business owners
- Why is Voice search so important to my Business?
- What are the top 5 tips to improve voice search for business owners?
- Are there any plugins that can help me build my reputation with voice searches?
48% of searches for business on Google are local and Geo-specific.
Zanet Design Ltd
It’s worthy to note that a standard SEO approach doesn’t work in this area. So your business needs to change with the times. For a website to work with Alexa, Siri, Google and Cortana a much longer set of keywords are needed. This is known as a semantic search. This requires you to think about conversational words and not just isolated keywords.
The majority of businesses are now being found via snippets and being at the top of the 3 pack search result. Also know as the local pack – see https://zanet.co.uk/local-google-my-business-3-pack/
Why is Voice search so important to my Business?
Do you know why voice search for business owners is so vital? Well its due to the fact that over 50% of all internet searches this year will be done by voice searching! You know the type of searches made on Alexa or Google Mini.
So while search engine optimisation is still a very relevant focus for business owners and their website, voice searching and optimising for voice search is now the biggest concern if you want to be found in the search engine. Web design marketing and customer habits are rapidly changing. Is your business web site ready for voice search?
What are the top 5 tips to improve voice search for business owners?
I want to help you make sure you have everything in place as I take a look at the 5 tips you need to consider ready for being found on voice searches. In 2020 an estimate of 200 billion voice search queries per month will take place. So this video is a full seo optimisation guide for 2020 voice search.
Video Tutorial
Click on the chapter and it will take you to the correct part of my voice search seo complete optimization video guide 2020
- 0:32 Introduction to voice search
- 1:00 Why is voice search engine optimisation so important
- 1:13 Voice search in action
- 2:02 The types of different voice searches your site may face
- 2:36 Tip 1: Mobile friendly check https://search.google.com/test/mobile…
- 4:00 Statistics on how digital assistance is spread
- 4:40 Mobile friendly results (statistics show a shift to mobile usage with voice semantic search)
- 6:00 Examples of long tail semantic keywords
- 6:48 Tip 2: Claim your Google My Business listing
- 7:35 Many unclaimed businesses and how to claim them
- 7:58 How to claim your businesses
- 8:11 Tip 3: Build your list of Google My Business reviews for authority
- 9:30 Tip 4: Use answerthepublic.com to help optimise your website for real questions
- 10:20 Real Google examples of questions asked majority from voice search
- 11:30 Also use the alphabetical prediction for ideas
- 12:05 What is Google wanting you to provide it with?
- 12:40 Notice Google provides different types of results to questions.
- 13:20 Tip 5: How can you use rich snippets to get to the top of Google voice search results?
- 14:00 Examples of rich snippets and related searches
- 14:40 Another example of various snippets for voice search
- 15:20 Use Yoast plugin to add How-To and FAQs see https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
- 15:48 Tutorial for Yoast structures data blocks in WordPress
Is your website Mobile friendly? Tip 1
I have to start by making sure that my website is mobile friendly before I convince you to do the same. Here is a fact. Even if you were mobile friendly last month, its easy to suddenly lose that status. Just adding one article can easily break that accolade.
Your customer habits are rapidly changing. Because of mobile voice search. So its not just down to Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana in thr home, its also due to there mobile phone usage on the go.
In 2020 I estimate over 2400 billion voice search queries will be made.
Zanet Design Ltd
Currently its not too late to make changes to your website and take advantage of the new opportunity of creating voice-optimised content. So go to https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly and check your website is mobile friendly. In effect this will future proof it and enable it to get the maximum exposure in the new way your clients are wanting to find you. Local business searching is one of the biggest growth areas your business needs to optimise for.
Searching through mobiles and smart device is now done by 73% of people on a daily basis.
Zanet Design Ltd
For local small businesses, being mobile friendly is essential and mandatory. If you have any questions or need help getting a mobile friendly website design then talk to me and I will be able to point you in the right direction.
Have you claimed your Google My Business listing? Tip 2
It’s unbelievable how many businesses havent yet claimed their Google My business listing. Voice search has been around for almost a decade and its not going away. Without the GMB listing you will not be found on Google maps and local searches. Very few businesses will survive another decade without this. Yet it only takes 5 minutes to claim it and any web designer can do this for you so don’t hesitate to contact a local web designer and ask for a few minutes of their time.
When you do claim your Google My Business listing there are a few quick things to do to make sure its all set for voice search. Make sure it presents the correct name address and phone number. If you want to know more about this take a look at this article called Google my business secret NAP. There I highlight the importance of consistency and its not as simple as it sounds as most businesses fall into the same trap.
In summary, your contact details and the details on your website must match. Add to that all other local index listings and you get the idea. We are talking 100% consistency. (Even the word Street and St are different enough to effect your ranking).
Have you collected genuine Google My Business reviews for increased authority? Tip 3
If you have a crowd of happy customers then ask them for a genuine review. Google isn’t stupid and soon eradicates fake reviews. If they havent done it yet, they are on to it. So for genuine long term benefits for your business, get into the habit of asking clients for a review after you have produced great work for them.
As you build your list of Google My Business reviews, you increase your authority in your listings and will rank higher.So after claiming your business in tip 2 above, I want you to make sure you have plenty of great reviews. They don’t have to be 5 star as Google tends to prefer an average of 4.5 stars (its considered more of a reflection of a genuine ranking system)
Have you optimised your website for real questions from real people? Tip 4
The public are now asking more questions than ever before because of voice search assistants and increased mobile usage. Rarely will someone fire up there laptop or desktop to get a quick question answered. This is why its worth taking a look at the answer the public website for a better understanding of your potential customers search habits. see https://answerthepublic.com/ This is real search data not just a list of suggestions.
So you would do well to think about your next article with this in mind. When you write your next blog or post, try and answer the questions real people are asking. Why not look at your FAQs and answer some relevant questions there. This is a great way to answer all those real questions from the voice search from business potentials.
Additionally, keep an eye on your analytics and data through Googles site kit plugin. This is really easy to install and will help you know what keywords and questions your visitors found you with. I highly recommend Google site kit WordPress plugin. This plugin simplifies everything,within WordPress itself. An absolute must if you want to keep and eye on your visitors and potential customers searching habits.
This type of personal approach is going to make your business far more useful and approachable. When you tailor your content to what people are looking for, you are now communicating the way your customers want to communicate. Now business can blossom in an empathetic environment.
The easiest way to add rich snippets to get to the top of Google voice search results? Tip 5
Rich snippets are highly detailed information to specifically scratch the itch of the visitor. It can be presented in various formats. So one of the biggest challenges is finding out from Google which type of snippet to deliver. To do so you would need to understand a bit more about how the schema. For more details you can read up on it at https://schema.org/docs/gs.html
Are there any plugins that can help me build my reputation with voice searches?
You can download the plugin when you visit https://yoast.com/what-is-a-snippet/ for WordPress or do a search for it from within the WordPress plugin area.
Businesses find around a 25% improvement in CTR when they implement Rich Snippets
Zanet Design Ltd
You know the type of searches made on Alexa or Google Mini. “Hey Google, What is the best local web designer?” Interestingly Google now tries to second guess these questions too. Its known as People also ask box and is produced by the rich snippets schema mentioned above.
Google does this because it wants everyone staying within Google rather than going off to your website. Do we fight it or work with it? I guess we go with it if we want our business to be around in a few years time. So while search engine optimization is still a very relevant focus for business owners and their website, voice searching and optimizing for voice search is now the biggest concern if you want to be found in the search engines.
Conclusion
Over 50% of all internet searches this year will be done by voice searching. So with that in mind, I’ve now given my very best advice on what in my mind are the top 5 tips to improve voice search for your business.
Almost 50% of business searches are local.Your clients are in your location looking for you.
Zanet Design Ltd
I’ve also now empowered you to be aware of some useful resources and plugins that can help you build a reputation with voice searches. Finally I hope you are fully convinced that voice search is here to stay and is incredibly important to future proofing your business.
For those of you who need a web designer in the Bournemouth, Christchurch or Poole area, then I’m currently available to do this for you. Or if you need to apply some of the things in this article of voice search for business owners or just have a question then contact me directly via my contact page for more help. Or feel free to comment below and I will do my best to answer your questions.