How Voice Search is Changing Local SEO for UK Businesses
Voice-enabled smart assistants were considered a gimmick when first introduced, but they have proven critics wrong, taking off and becoming a normal way to search online. The popularity of smart assistants, including Google Home, Siri, and Alexa, has grown exponentially over the past few years with more than twenty percent of UK homes now owning a smart assistant device and forty one percent of UK homes planning to buy one in the next few years.
Currently there are more than two billions people using voice search each day, accounting for more than half of all online searches.
The rise of voice enabled smart assistants has changed online searches, along with how results are delivered:
Voice searches are conversational, rather than a single word or phrase used when typing into a desktop or mobile. Voice search tends to use full sentences, often in the form of a question. They use long-tail keywords with fully-formed phrases
Results are spoken answers, offering a list of links to web pages that the search engine has determined best meets the search query.
A user has a specific intent when searching online. This can be to learn about a business or find directions to a local business, a word that is included in the search query. There is a major difference between web-based and voice searches with web-based searches spanning the entire range of search intents, where voice searches are informational or location based. Voice searches are often a response to external stimuli, looking for basic information such as the weather, times a film is playing at a cinema, or even the country's capital city.
Answers to these queries are taken from featured snippets of results pages or information stored in Google My Business profiles:
It's important to include web-based and voice-search strategies in your Local SEO campaign to help you improve relevance and prominence across web and voice platforms. Voice search is on the rise, which is why it's important to cater to voice search without replacing your current SEO strategy. In fact, voice search should support your local SEO strategy, working hand-in-hand. When you target both, you have a higher chance of boosting your online presence and reaching your potential customers.
Voice search has become common in today's digital world, with more people using voice-based searches when on the move. With over fifty percent of online searches now being voice-based, UK businesses need to have an effective local SEO and voice search strategy in place to improve online presence, reach your targeted audience, and drive them to your website or physical location. If you need help optimising your website for voice search, get in touch with the talented team at Genie Crawl today.
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