Essential voice search strategies for 2017

There is only one thing that remains true about the SEO that is it's always changing. One of the biggest changes that are seen now in local SEO is the increasing popularity of voice search. Voice search used to be a novelty, but it's a necessity now especially when you are on the go with your smartphone or tablet.

So if you are having a local business, how can you optimize for this new personal assistant type search. Here are some tips by professionals providing local SEO services in Boston. 

Voice searches are on the rise

Google says around 20% of searches on its mobile app and Android devices are voice searches. The total number of voice searches are actually much higher when you take into account personal assistants like Siri, Amazon’s Echo, Google Home, tools that are solely based on voice recognition. 

The reason behind the rise in voice search is it is getting more accurate now. Earlier voice search was simply not accurate. In many cases, it was rather frustrating than helpful. But now according to Internet Trends 2016 report, the accuracy rate is up to 92%. That’s a huge improvement. As the voice recognition will get more and more accurate, the capabilities of voice search will expand, and the consumers will reap the benefits as its popularity continues to rise. Another reason why the voice search is gaining popularity is because the new devices like Alexa and Google Home are bringing voice search to the everyday consumer. 

People have more voice recognition technologies to choose from, and there are certainly more on the horizon.

So if you are thinking to stay ahead of the local search, you need to think about voice search as you start optimizing your website. Read the article Voice Search: Fortune of local businesses to gain more insight on how voice search is a future of local businesses. 

Optimizing your local business for voice search

• Many consumers use voice search to get information about local businesses they want to go to. The searches may be in the form of ‘Where is the best Pizza Restaurant in Boston?’. In this case, you want to make sure that you optimize the content on your pages for the ‘best Pizza restaurant in New York ‘  Thus adding natural language to your content site will only help you with voice search results. 
• You can also create Q&A pages, using words and phrases that people actually speak is another great way to add natural language to your website. Make these Q&A pages more conversational in tone, and the keyword phrases you use will probably resonate more with a person performing a voice search.
• Also, make sure that it’s easy enough for the search bots to crawl your site and know about your business. This can raise the chances that your content will be displayed in response to a voice search question. Make sure you submit your sitemap to Bing and Google
• Additionally, start incorporating microdata, rich snippets, schema, and so on. These little pieces of code give the search engines, even more, information about what your business is all about. If you are still in the doubt for structured data check out Google’s  Structured Data Markup Helper, where you can see the different kinds of content you can mark up. It will also assist you through the process and make sure you are including the right HTML on your site. 
• Make sure your business is claimed and optimized and your listings are accurate with respect to your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP). so that if a person uses the common local search phrase ‘near me’, then your on-site optimization probably won’t affect the results much. Instead, the device will look at where the user is physically located when they perform the search and pull up listings that are on Bing Places, or Google My Business, for Business or other online directories.

Small changes - Start Today!

Optimizing for voice search doesn’t mean you have to overhaul your entire strategy or the content on your site. But you need to make some subtle changes that are going to make you more successful in voice search world. 

Understand the intent behind the voice search, the mobile voice searches will use the natural language which implies that long-tail phrases will be more important. So start thinking about the naturally spoken questions that may be asked about your business, product or service. 

Take a look at your analytics. Google’s Search Console reports show you what queries are bringing people to your site. 

Since most voice searches are done on mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly site is a MUST.  If a person does a voice search, goes to your site and has a bad experience, you have lost!

For more help regarding optimization of your site for voice search, you can contact to Local Seo Company In Atlanta .