Have you used voice search to look for something on Google? Or perhaps you’ve wondered about the possibility of getting customers to your business through Google Voice Search?

If you are a small business owner, it’s particularly important that your business shows up on Internet searches, and right now, voice search is proving to be a game-changer for many business owners who are optimizing their websites the right way.

According to recent research, 27 percent of the global population uses voice search. In the U.S. alone, voice assistants are being used by 111 million people.

The Beginnings of Google Voice Search

Since Google is the primary search engine used by most people, it makes sense to concentrate on the company’s developments in this area.

Other voice-enabled platforms that have become increasingly popular with users include Apple’s Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa.

In 2010, Google first introduced Google Voice Search, but it was much more cumbersome back then. One had to call a phone number from a mobile device and when prompted by a recorded message, say the words, “Say Your Search Keywords.”

Obviously, we’ve come a long way since then, with millions of people today regularly using voice search on their mobile devices while on the go or simply interacting with it on their desktops.

This growing trend has replaced the user’s need to search for things on the Web by typing (the average person types around 40 words a minute) and instead do the same but much faster with the spoken word (most people can speak around 150 words in a minute!).

Voice searches, for the most part, produce very similar results to typed queries.

Where It Has Taken Us

The evolution of voice search by Google paved the way for developments in speech recognition technology, which factors hugely into SEO in general and how successful your business might be in moving to the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Voice search has also increased what is known as people-based marketing, which is when companies, like Google, know enough about us to help advertisers direct marketing campaigns our way.

As this type of personalized marketing becomes more prevalent, it’s clear that not only will our browsing history and shopping preferences come into play, but our voices will, too, based upon our speech patterns, our accents, and so on.

How to Optimize Your Business Website for Voice Search

To optimize your business for voice search, you’ll need to pay attention to SEO. That means updating your website frequently with relevant content that includes keywords related to the products and services that you sell.

Here are some of the ways to optimize for Google Voice Search.

• Include Street Address and Opening Hours

A simple voice search related to the opening hours of a particular business or its street address is an example of the kind of user intent that you should keep in mind when creating your website.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business, it’s important that you include such crucial information.

• Think About the Questions Potential Customers Might Ask in a Voice Search

Just because you know the ins and outs of your own business doesn’t mean that everyone else does. Think about the questions a person might ask when searching for your business.

For example, if somebody is searching the Internet for a reliable electrician, that business owner might want to include keywords that users typically type into a search engine bar, such as “electrician near me,” “qualified electrician,” “licensed electrician in Westchester” (or wherever you live), “electrical contractor,” “electrician emergency service.” or “local electrician.”

Think, also, about the sentences that users might construct when looking for your business.

In the SEO world, these are called longtail keywords. Many businesses overlook these for the shorter phrases above, but in fact, the shorter keywords are more competitive and harder to rank for. The longer, more conversational phrases, especially those that are used in voice searches, are often easier to rank for and will give you a better chance of being higher on a search page.

Using the example above, users might say something like, “a licensed electrician who is based in Westchester” or “an electrician who is available for emergency situations.”

• Make Sure the Content on Your Website is Relevant to Your Customers’ Needs

In addition to the keywords above, be sure to include other valuable information as part of your website’s content creation strategy. Adding your unique selling proposition and the kinds of services and products you sell are things customers will want to know.

• Create an Online Business Listing

I’ve mentioned the importance of local SEO before and the fact that every business should have a Google My Business listing. Be sure, also, to sign up for a Bing listing, which is equally valuable. Bing ranks higher than you might think since it is also the default search engine used by Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana.

• Use Schema Metadata

I know it sounds fancy but in actuality, it’s code that is put on your website to help search engines return more valuable, informative results to the user. It basically helps search engines recognize the meaning of your content.

Websites that use schema markup generally rank better, sometimes even four positions higher on the SERPs than those that do not.

The visual result can be seen as “rich snippets,” which are commonly used on recipe websites but can be useful on other sites, too. Rich Snippets provide additional information in search results that can make your site more noticeable to users, which ultimately means more organic traffic to your site.

Adding this feature is not as difficult as you might think, especially if you have a WordPress website. If not, ask your web developer to do it for you.

Have you optimized your website for voice search? If so, let me know in the comments section below and as always, feel free to sign up for my regular e-newsletter.