The Internet is always changing and bringing new technologies that we have to adapt to if we want to continue to generate and inspire customers tomorrow. One topic that is currently being discussed very hotly but not enough is voice search which was implemented in a strategy. Thanks to Siri, Cortana, Alexa and similar, this technology has long been part of our everyday life and is still not taken seriously enough.
If you take a look at the statistics of your websites, you’ll see trends similar to ours: at least half of all visitors now come from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The trend is still rising. In addition, statistics say that the average user is online for more than two hours per day with a mobile device – and for the advertising-relevant group of people aged up to 49, one in four even spends up to four hours a day using a mobile device on the Internet. In view of these figures and the developments in general, it becomes clear: more and more searches are carried out via mobile devices – and also gladly over the voice, because the speech recognition is now so good that a reworking is rarely necessary. To be honest, it’s so much faster to say something than to write or type. The convenience wins! Again, there are statistics that show that even today, every fifth search query is made via Siri, Google Voicesearch, Alexa, etc.
Honestly … are you prepared for it? Is your website and content optimized so that you can really be in the top results of voice search, and therefore take that traffic with you? Only very few will be able to answer these questions with “yes”. Rather, there is a need for optimization – and strategies are required, as the website can be adapted to the Voice Search. In the technical field, the use of structured data is the first and most important step. But also the AMP optimization and general compliance with the rules and recommendations for the optimization of mobile websites plays a major role (especially the Page Speed).
In the content area, rethinking will be necessary for one or the other. Here, it’s not just a question of presenting advertising messages and information, but above all of answering questions – because these are especially frequently asked with voice search. So, ask yourself what questions your audience has and how you can best answer them. Of course, these answers should then have priority in the content and be presented clearly – maybe even in the form of a FAQ or something similar. This is the first step towards voice search optimization, and you can continue testing and tweaking the results you get with it!
