Tips for voice search optimisation

Think you don’t need to pay attention to voice search optimisation? Think again.

Just look at these stats:

• 55% of households are expected to own smart speaker devices by 2022
• 65% of 25-49-year-olds speak to their voice-enabled devices at least once per day
• 30% of web browsing sessions were screen less in 2020
• Voice is expected to be a £30 billion channel by 2022
• Up to 43% of voice-enabled device owners use their device to shop
• 51% of those who shop via voice use it to research products

So now you know how important voice search is, here’s what you need to know about optimising your website.

Understanding your different audience types

When it comes to those who use voice search, your audience can be broadly separated into three categories: informational, navigational and transactional. Because they’re all looking for slightly different types of information, you need to make sure your website is correctly optimised so they can find what they’re looking for.

Informational

Informational users tend to be searching for info about a certain topic or product. Because they’re still in their initial research phase, they might not be completely ready to buy yet. But that’s okay! Once they’ve found you it’s likely they’ll come back again. Informational users will likely be using broader keywords so you need to make sure you’ve optimised your site for these types of keywords. If you get it right, they’ll find the info they need via your website and you’ll be seen as a trustworthy, authoritative source of information.

Navigational

Navigational users are usually looking to get to a specific place, such as a website. To drive navigational users to your site you need to make sure you own your own brand’s navigational query so you appear at the top of the results.

Transactional

Transactional users are looking to make a purchase. They’re ready to spend their money! Yay! These types of queries can include specific brand names such as ‘Adidas trainers’ or can be more generic like ‘running trainers’. By optimising your site for transactional search queries you’ll be able to capture customers at the business end of the conversion funnel. In other words, you’ll make money!

Content for voice search optimisation

According to seoClarity, almost 20% of all voice search queries are triggered by a set of 25 keywords. These consist mainly of question words like “how” or “what” and adjectives like “best” or “easy.” So with that in mind, you need to create content that contains these types of keywords. Keep in mind that content for voice search should be more conversational and contain longer-tail keywords because that’s how people speak into their devices.

Looking for expert help with voice search optimisation? We’re an SEO agency in Manchester with a team of digital marketing experts who can help you get found through voice search. Contact us to see how we can help your business online.