How Brands Can Leverage Voice Search for Revenue Growth

Consumers have never had as many opportunities to discover new brands, products, and services. Organic Search has long been the gold standard, but voice search is becoming increasingly popular and presents incredible opportunities.

Let’s take a closer look at what voice search is, how it compares to traditional SEO, and some best practices for optimizing your site for voice search.

Just as it sounds, voice search is the process of using your voice to search for something online. Every time you’ve asked Siri or another assistant to look something up, you’ve performed a voice search.

While you can use your voice to search on Google and other search engines within your browser, this falls more into the dictation category, since you still browse traditional text search results.

Voice search specifically refers to searches performed by assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana, and others on smartphones, smart speakers, and other connected devices.

So, it’s basically just another way to search for things online, right?

Yes, but there’s more to it, and it presents incredible revenue opportunities for brands that make voice search optimizations, and can help future-proof your Organic Search efforts (https://www.veloxmedia.com/blog/future-of-seo).

With a rise in voice searches comes the need for voice search optimization, or voice SEO.

Before Google was a staple in daily life, businesses never would have thought of optimizing their websites for Organic Search. Fast forward to today, and competing online without a solid SEO foundation is virtually impossible.

The same will be said for voice search in the coming years.

Brands are just beginning their voice search optimization efforts, so it’s not too late to prioritize voice search in your overarching Organic Search strategy.

Here’s a quick look at how voice search optimization and traditional SEO compare.

Even though voice search and SEO have similar goals and many of the same optimization best practices, understanding the key differences and implementing a distinct voice SEO strategy can put your brand in the best position moving forward.

Optimizing for voice search is about more than just expanding your brand’s search presence; it can also have tangible revenue benefits.

Voice search is for more than just converting ounces to cups while cooking. Searching by voice is quickly becoming a popular method to find everything from restaurants near a user to making purchases online.

That last part is why investing in voice search optimization is especially beneficial.

With advancements in LLM processing and understanding, voice assistants are becoming smarter, and their capabilities will only expand.

But they’re already impacting commerce, both locally and online.

Consider these voice shopping stats:

These voice search stats paint a clear picture: This isn’t a passing trend, and brands can’t afford to ignore the revenue potential of voice commerce.

The good news is that it works hand-in-hand with other digital channels.

Organic Search is the most complementary channel since many virtual assistants cite the top organic result when delivering answers to users.

However, voice search can also integrate seamlessly with your Amazon and retail media advertising efforts. Amazon has been a huge player in voice commerce for years through their Alexa-enabled devices, and ordering products is seamless with voice search.

The bottom line: Voice search optimization is crucial for expanding your brand’s reach and could be a primary driver for growth in the years ahead. Investing in voice SEO can only benefit your business.

As with all things digital marketing these days, AI has an impact on voice search.

Specifically, AI has enabled voice assistants to provide more contextually accurate, personalized results for users.

Integrated LLM systems can better understand the nuance and intent behind a user’s voice search.

AI has made these voice assistants more useful, and in turn, users are more likely to trust and use them to make a direct purchase.

Just like AI in Google Search, voice assistants are becoming more advanced. Even if they’re not a part of daily life for most people just yet, they soon will be, especially with heavy players like Apple, Amazon, and Google making considerable investments in their AI-powered virtual assistants.

Optimizing for voice search isn’t dissimilar to traditional SEO. They share similar goals, and many of the same proven on-page and technical SEO strategies apply to voice search, but some things take priority over others when optimizing for voice search specifically.

Structured data and schema markup enable crawlers to better understand a page’s content. It provides critical contextual information and improves your chances of appearing in knowledge panels and other “position zero” features, which voice search assistants often cite.

Remember, if you want to be found in voice search, being number two or three isn’t enough; your site needs to be the first, most relevant result for a given query.

Google loves fast-loading websites, and so do virtual assistants. Your pages should load quickly and be easy to navigate.

Utilize Google’s Page Speed Insights tool to identify areas for improvement, typically by compressing images, reducing redirects, and even upgrading your hosting if necessary.

You should also ensure your site is mobile-friendly. Google implemented mobile-first indexing years ago, so this is no longer an optional optimization, especially since most people use voice search on mobile devices.

Make sure your site loads quickly, runs smoothly, and is easy to navigate on all devices, and you’ll be in a better position to rank highly in traditional search results while being found by voice search tools.

Voice and traditional search mostly differ in how a user enters their query. While someone might type “men's shoes running” into Google, they’ll ask their voice assistant something longer, and more conversational, like “Where can I buy running shoes for my upcoming marathon?”

If you want to improve voice search visibility, you need to target long-tail, conversational keywords. Answer engine optimization plays a role here, as most people ask their virtual assistants direct questions.

Make sure you target and optimize for key phrases with terms like "what," "how," "why," "when," etc. included.

It’s not enough to fill your website with content and hope something sticks. It’s crucial you think about what someone using voice search would want to learn from your content, and how they would communicate with their virtual assistant.

It’s best to write clear, easy-to-understand content that is contextually relevant to your target audience and their query.

User experience is the top priority, so make sure you’re implementing these best practices in your voice search content strategy:

If you haven’t already, make sure your site features FAQ sections, sometimes at the bottom of every product page if it makes sense. The goal is to have an answer ready for any question a user may ask their virtual assistant about products and services from brands like yours.

Improving your rankings in traditional and voice search requires authority. Your brand should be a trusted expert that customers can count on to solve their problems or improve their lives.

Along with optimizing your on-site content, content syndication can expand your brand’s reach, helping to build your authority while creating a healthy, robust backlink profile that indicates to Google you’re worth a higher ranking.

Syndication is a part of our content strategy services, and we continue to leverage it for brands hoping to dominate both traditional and voice search results.

Voice search is set to play a significant role in the future of search, and now is the best time to optimize your site.

VELOX partners with growing and established brands to help them cement their authority and achieve top rankings for the most valuable SERPs.

We’ve been helping brands achieve search engine dominance for years, and have the results to back it up, conservatively targeting a 400 to 800% ROI.

Contact us today to learn how we can help optimize your site for voice search and beyond.