Let's deal with the why first! A few months ago I wrote an article 'Is Voice Search Within Fashion E-commerce the Future?' In this, we explored the ins and out of voice search and how it could affect fashion E-commerce for the future.
Starting With a Summary
After all the research my thoughts on this topic are voice search in fashion E-commerce is an exciting place to be at the moment. In fact, we could open this excitement up to all of the E-commerce industry. Companies that get it right now have a lot to gain, there is no doubt in years to come voice search within voice-activated personal assistants will be the norm. So it makes sense to start building a voice search strategy sooner rather than later!
In my previous article, I promised to follow-up on how to optimise your website and SEO for voice search. After all, knowing you need to do it and doing it are different things. I thought it would be nice to lend a helping hand on some tips to get you started on your road to optimising your website and SEO!
Why Should You? - The Frictionless Test?
There is one phrase I always use to know if something will be a hit with people or not. That is 'is it frictionless with the path of least resistance?' Let me elaborate. We humans are complex yet simple in a lot of ways. One of those ways is we will lean towards the direction of least hassle, the frictionless road if you will. It makes total sense, we save time and don't burn valuable brain cells figuring out harder routes. If you have a technology you can ask for the weather, a recipe or to play music much faster than you can pull out your phone and type it in, then you will, I do, and I'm sure the majority of you do too. Now, as soon as shopping becomes as easy, rewarding and a pleasant experience we are going to jump on board in numbers! Why? Because it's easy, it's the path of least resistance, therefore, you will be drawn to use it. You will only need one quick enjoyable experience and you will be hooked. There is no doubt that voice search is faster than traditional methods of searching. This makes it the number one reason for people to use it in their day to day routines. For me, voice search in E-commerce passes my 'will it be a future hit' test!
It's Just For The Young
Now, you may think this is for young people only, and you have plenty of time to figure this out before it becomes the mainstream. It is certainly true that when our children reach spending age they will have grown up with voice-based personal assistance all their life. It will be a forgone conclusion that they will be using an easy to use voice-based E-commerce system. My children treat Siri and Alexa as part of the family, asking advice and dare I say asking for the latest rendition of Tiny Shark! They even sing about washing your hands now post COVID19, good going Tiny Shark! But let me get back to my point. In a 2019 report by Thrive Analytics, 69% of Millennials, age 23 to 38, have tried a voice-based search on a mobile device. This was up 15% from prior-year results. Of the Millennials that do use voice-based search, 74% do so weekly. Also, 66% of Millennials use voice-based search in their homes and 32% of Millennials have used voice-based search on a smart speaker. Seems quite impressive already, but it's not just for the young! Have a look at these graphs below and you will see voice technology is being used by a wide range of ages in different situations! Bear in mind also this is not this year's data, looking at how things are increasing and the picture will look even more interesting for 2020/21. Ok, lets now get down to what you can be doing to help in your pursuit to optimising for voice search.
Smartphone Voice Personal Assistant Users by Age
Demographical Voice Search Location Usage: Teens
Demographical Voice Search Location Usage: Adults
How do I Optimise My Website and SEO For Voice Search?
1- Make Sure your website is compatible with the HTTPS framework.
Neil Patel found that over 65% of the results for a voice search came from websites with HTTPS frameworks. It's known that Google prefers websites with this, so it makes sense that more results would come from a website that is compatible!
2- Build an Authoritative Domain.
You need a good well-managed website with a positive user experience, plenty of quality interesting content, lots of links and good social shares. It all takes time but you need this for a good normal search as standard, so there is no surprise that this will be high on Googles list of must-haves for voice. Quality and time are the strategies here.
3- Fast Loading Website.
Make sure your website loads fast, again this is a great tip even in normal search optimisation! Your website needs to load in 4.6 seconds or faster. This is 50% faster than most websites load, you are more likely to hit the voice search algorithm with this in place. Take a Google speed test and see how you fare
4- Short Answers to Questions.
The use of questions with small concise answers within longer format pages is very Google friendly. Pages with over 2200 words perform better within voice search, especially if they have questions embedded within them with a short one to two paragraph answers. This makes it easier for Google to index more keywords and also have easy snippet answers for them to present in their voice search results.
5- Keyword Research for Voice Search
Questions that are asked in voice search are different from how you type them. It is obviously much more conversational when you are asking a question as opposed to typing one, so you need to take your keyword research in that direction. For instance, look into all question keywords. Voice search queries contain a lot of question words like what, how, why, when, where. So when researching and formulating keywords make sure you include these.
Use Long-tail keywords as it can complete a question in a more conversational format. We all know Google likes longer format keywords so do not underestimate the power of the long-tail keyword!
Filler words really need to be included in your questions and answers. These make your SEO designed Q&A's much more conversational and human in nature. Examples of filler words are “I, to, to be, the, of the, on the, for, for the”, and so on.
6- Optimize for Rich Answers
A SEMrush voice search study found that "70% of all answers returned from voice searches were a SERP feature. A 'SERP feature’ is any result found on a Google Search Engine Results Page that is not a traditional organic result. It looks like rich answers are regularly given out frequently in voice search. The term 'Rich Answers' is whenever a search result is given out by the following:
Googles Knowledge Graph
Knowledge Panel
Knowledge Box
Featured Snippet (Coming from third-party sources)
It is a good idea to get yourself acquainted with what these are and optimise for them. Moz.com has a great feature on this for you to look at.
7 - Google My Business Listings
Make sure you optimise your Google listing with the relevant information and keywords. A lot of voice searches start with people wanting to find a business first.
8 - Make sure your website is mobile-friendly!
This should go without saying, but make sure it is or you will be penalised not only in voice search but in traditional search too.
Conclusion
We hope we have given you a bit of insight into optimising for voice search. There are lots of interesting articles out there to read but this should get you started on a few ideas. The time of voice search is upon us, and yes, those Tiny Sharkers will become whale shark consumers with an adept knowledge of voice search soon! The competition will only get harder with more consumers using voice search, so it may be worth testing all your strategies now before the space really heats up. What are your thoughts on optimising for voice? Are you already involved? Or are you hanging back to see where search trends take us?
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