Is your small business ready for voice search? Think that kind of tech is only for Gen Z? I showed my 88-year-old mom how to ask for music on her Amazon Echo, and she figured out on her own how to get the weather and time.
Comscore envisions within the next year voice search technology will account for 50% of online searches. Is this good or bad news for small business? It’s good news as many voice searches are local and mobile.
Is your Google My Business information up to date and optimized? Start with checking you’re in the correct business category. Customers won’t find you if they’re looking for X, and your business says its Y.
A website perfected for mobile use becomes even more important with voice search. And the faster it loads, the better. Voice search tends to use keyword phrases rather than keywords.
Voice search technology and mobile love featured snippets and knowledge graphs. Both appear before regular search results, a coveted space. Writing page content to answer an oft-asked customer question is featured snippet material. Knowledge guides are page content answering a standard question, such as the temperature in your area today.
There are multiple tools to enhance your site for voice search. To improve your local SEO, try Bright Local, or SE Ranking or Whitespark Local Citation Finder. TextOptimizer improves your content by checking if your keywords are hitting on all cylinders in search and suggests better ones.
Have no idea how fast your website loads? Give Netpeak Spider or Ahrefs or SiteImprove a whirl.
Author: Kris Keppeler, a writer who finds technology fascinating and loves humor. She writes for Crossing Genres on Medium.com and Does This Happen to You? on Channillo. Award-winning podcast producer who enjoys telling stories. Follow her @KrisKKAria on Twitter or on LinkedIn.
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