In 2015, voice searches grew from nonexistent to 10% of all searches globally. In 2016, Google announced that those figures are already up to 20%.

The rapid rise of voice search is not only fascinating as a cultural phenomenon, but it’s changing the way users interact with search engines. For businesses, it means the search landscape is evolving, and there’s a huge opportunity at hand.

Will you adapt to your users’ search habits or fall behind?

Finally, yelling at your computer actually gets a response

The growth of voice search is driven by digital assistant tools such as Apple’s “Siri,” Microsoft’s “Cortana,” and Google’s (very creative) “GoogleNow.” But while the voice trend got its start in the confines of our cell phones, it’s quickly becoming ever-present.

Take Alexa, for example. Alexa is the artificial intelligence engine in Amazon Echo, an unobtrusive cylinder speaker for your home that you control completely by voice. It can order products for you (from Amazon, of course), keep a grocery list, play your music, and search the Internet for answers to your questions.

While home voice assistants like Alexa aren’t yet the norm, the stage is set for a new era of search. It’s rumored that Amazon has sold at least 3 million Amazon Echo devices, and Google is planning on releasing its competitor product, “Google Home” (again, great name). Apple is expected to cook up its own solution as well in the near future.

The impact of voice search on SEO

As users increase their voice searches, how can marketers keep pace? After all, the vast majority of content is optimized for search engine crawlers and readers, not speakers.

The great minds of marketing (including Moz’s Rand Fishkin) agree that voice search is just going to keep growing. Marketers who want to stay on top of its growth should understand three concepts: user intent, long-tail keywords, and natural-voice queries.

User intent
Back in the day, Google ranked pages based on keyword frequency. In other words, if an article was about golf clubs, Google tracked how often the term “golf clubs” was used on the page and gave the highest rankings to the pages with the highest frequency.

With hindsight being 20/20, it’s clear that this was a flawed approach that many people took advantage of. Over the past decade, Google has continually changed the way its algorithm functions, focusing more on quality and making it difficult to game the system.

As a result, the web pages that do well with today’s algorithms are those that take the user’s intent into account.

Google uses a “semantic search” process to analyze the reader’s search not only for keywords, but also for the type of information it thinks the person is looking for.

Is their search query a question? Are they looking for general information or specific details? Did they search for “plummers in Phenix,” but it’s obvious that they meant to search for “plumbers in Phoenix”?

Moving past the old-school keyword mindset and considering the user’s intent is one of the best ways to play by today’s SEO rules and optimize your site for real people.

Long-tail keywords
With Google paying so much attention to user intent, people have learned that they can search with more specificity and get the information they’re looking for faster, hence the rise of long-tail keywords.

Unlike a normal search query that’s just 1-3 words (like “golf clubs”), long-tail keywords are longer, more specific phrases that get to the heart of what users are really looking for (like “best hybrid golf club for beginners”).

The Internet is so chock-full of information that searchers often have better luck finding what they want when they get super specific. Businesses that create content geared toward these specific searches also have a higher chance of ranking for long-tail keywords and converting visitors because they’re giving people exactly what they want.

Natural-voice queries
Natural-voice queries are searches that are spoken (or written) the same way you might ask a question to a friend. For example, a standard search query might be “directions from Phoenix to Tucson,” but a natural-voice query would be “How do I get from Phoenix to Tucson?”

While this search style isn’t new (just ask your parents or grandparents), natural-voice queries have become more popular in recent years due to the rise of voice search.

For example, if you’re doing a search on your home computer for a doctor, you might type “hair stylists in Arizona.” But if you’re on the go, you might use voice search and ask, “Siri, where is the nearest hair stylist?”

These questions or statements not only represent a natural-voice query, but they also include long-tail keywords, which help hone in on more specific and relevant results.

4 ways to speak up and harness voice search

Want to cash in on the voice search trend? Here are some practical ways to incorporate it into your marketing practices.

1) Answer your customers’ questions

In the past few years, we’ve seen Amazon build out the Q & A section on their product pages, and crowdsourced Q & A websites like Quora have become increasingly popular in search results.

It’s clear that Google favors sites that provide answers to common user questions, so building a robust FAQ page on your website or writing articles in a Q & A format can help your pages rank for the questions your customers are already asking.

2) Get specific
It might feel logical to make your website general so it applies to as many people as possible, but this approach can actually hinder your results. Instead, include details that will appeal to users who are looking for exactly what you offer.

For e-commerce, this might mean adding descriptors to product names (like “Amazon Echo Voice-Controlled Speaker”) to help people immediately understand what it is and rank for long-tail keywords. When writing articles, drill down into one single topic instead of staying broad or covering multiple themes in the same post.

3) Highlight your location
If you have brick-and-mortar locations, you have an opportunity to cash in on a search trend that’s been growing right alongside voice search: local search.

Back in the day, location wasn’t even a consideration for search. Now, we’re seeing queries like “restaurants near me” ranking as some of the most popular searches.

Local searches are performed in the moment, often using voice. If you have a physical location, location-targeted AdWords ads may help you capture real-time searches from potential customers.

4) Use voice search yourself
The best way to understand how customers are using this feature is to begin using it yourself. If you have a phone with voice search, play around with it, and see what happens!

Find your voice with ParaCore

Voice search is just one of the many trends we’re watching. Our team keeps up with everything that’s affecting PPC today to help our clients stay ahead of the game and get real results.

Want to see how your business could build an ad campaign that’s optimized for voice search or use other PPC strategies to bring in more leads? We’ll take a look at your current AdWords campaigns or help you start a new one with $100 in free ad credit. No strings attached! Sign up for a free consultation to get started.