Bruno Farinelli
Every month, consumers conduct more than 1 billion voice searches via a smart device. By 2022, it’s estimated that more than half of the U.S. population will have a smart speaker in their homes, and that voice search commerce – also called v-commerce – will reach more than $40 billion. Is your online store ready to capitalize on major change in the way your customers research their purchases and place their orders?
It’s hard to believe online shopping could get any easier. After all, with just a few keystrokes and clicks, customers can have the perfect gift or other must-have item delivered right to their doorstep. But it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that voice search and shopping can simplify the purchasing process even further.
Merchants shouldn’t wait to take advantage of this trend. Instead, start thinking today about how you can optimize your website to meet the needs of v-commerce consumers. Here are four recommendation to help you capture your fair share of this super-hot voice search commerce trend.
1. Use Long-Tail Keywords
Typically, when e-commerce merchants want to rank high in the search engines, their SEO strategy includes a combination of high-volume, short-tail keywords plus lower-volume, long-tail keywords. A long-tail keyword is actually a phrase that includes several highly specific, targeted words. For example, a short-tail keyword for an e-commerce merchant might be “basketball shoes.” A long-tail keyword variation of that might be “men’s extra wide basketball shoes,” or “kid’s Air Jordan basketball shoes size 10.”
To be found on voice search, think about how your customers are most likely to speak into their smart phone or Amazon Echo device. For instance, a customer is much more likely to say, “Alexa, where can I find an antique silver wood frame mirror near me?” rather than simply, “Alexa, mirror.” Make sure your product pages are properly optimized for these long-tail keywords, so Alexa, Siri, and other voice search assistants can easily find them and show these options to the customer.
Voice Search Tip
How do you know which long-tail keywords to include? Sites like Answer the Public can show you what questions consumers are asking. Use these insights to identify the keywords you need to integrate into your website content.
2. Understand How Speak Search and Type Search Are Different
Consumers type their search queries very differently than how they speak their search queries. Spoken searches are much more conversational and often contain full sentences. While a consumer might type “hoverboard” into a search engine, they might speak “Where can I buy a hoverboard?”
To accommodate this new behavior and ensure your site can be found via voice search, think about how you can conversationalize the content on your site.
Voice Search Tip
One way to get those questions into your website is by adding a robust Q&A page or a pillar page with well-phrased questions and concise, easy-to-understand answers.
3. Improve Local Voice Search Results
Did you know that Google displays voice results based on relevance, distance and prominence? If you have both an online presence and a brick-and-mortar location, you can benefit from adding local SEO to your website.
To help boost your local search performance, make sure your web content mentions proximity to local landmarks, customer reviews, and press mentions.
Voice Search Tip
Consumers often use phrases like “near me”, “nearby”, or keywords specific to the neighborhood, city, zip code, etc. they are in when conducting voice searches. Therefore, don’t forget to include these terms in your title tags, meta descriptions and internal links.
4. Increase Site Speed and Mobile Responsiveness
Site speed and voice search optimization go hand in hand. Since 2018, Google has been using site speed as an important ranking criteria for mobile searches. If your website is lagging or nonresponsive, both your mobile and voice search results will take a hit.
Voice Search Tip
With just a few simple website tweaks — such as minimizing redirects, optimizing the size the images on your site, and minimizing your website code — you can speed up your mobile site’s performance and improve your search results.
While voice search continues to increase in popularity with shoppers, it’s not the only trend merchants need to understand and implement. Consider taking a look at our popular E-Commerce Technology Trends white paper for additional ideas and inspiration. In it, we identify the key emerging technologies we think will be important to e-commerce moving forward, and we share great examples of online retailers who are killing it right now. After you read it, if you’re wondering how to implement these exciting strategies safely into your sales efforts, just contact us. We’d be glad to help.