5 Simple Steps to Using Voice Search to Unlock Small Business Opportunities
What does Google’s obsession with Star Trek have to do with marketing your small business? The world’s biggest search engine wants to build a super-search machine similar to the Star Trek computer: humanistic artificial intelligence that’s capable of conversation and anticipating our needs. This vision is driving the evolution of voice search — a technology that’s unlocking small business opportunities.
In an interview with Slate, Amit Singhal, Google’s former head of search rankings, elaborated on the company’s Star Trek ambitions, and they’re less abstract than you think:
“…For instance, we might say, ‘Captain Kirk never pulled out a keyboard to ask a question.’ So in that way it becomes one of the design principles — we see that because the Star Trek computer actively relies on speech, if we want to do that we need to work to push the barrier of speech recognition and machine understanding.”
It’s not only Google — consumers are also embracing voice search.
In 2014, Baidu’s former chief scientist, Andrew Ng, estimated that around 50% of search queries will be made using voice or images by 2020. Five years after Ng’s prediction, voice is shaping up to be one of search’s most powerful tools and it presents massive opportunities for small business development.
According to data curated by WordStream:
- 35 million Americans used a voice-activated device at least once a month in 2017
- There were one million voice searches per month as of January 2018
Households are also purchasing smart speakers to get traffic and weather reports, make calls, and reduce their screen time, according to the Smart Audio Report released by NPR and Edison Research.
So, how does this affect small business development?
The 2018 State of Voice Assistants survey by Adobe Digital Insights revealed the following trends:
- 47% of respondents used voice assistants to find product information
- 43% used the technology to create shopping lists
- 32% performed price comparisons
Voice search shopping on Alexa alone could generate $5 billion per year by 2020, and spending on voice assistants will reach $19 billion by 2022, according to a report by Recode.
While you might think these megatrends don’t hold much relevance for small business development, voice search presents a significant opportunity.
More than 50% of consumers have used voice search to find local business information, and 46% of consumers use voice search to find a local business every day, according to a survey by BrightLocal.
How does smart voice technology play a role in creating small business opportunities? There are a few easy ways your small business can take advantage of the search innovation, and it doesn’t have to break your budget.
Local SEO and Listing Your Business
Local SEO has the potential to unlock small business opportunities. There are one billion search queries each month, and close to 40% have local intent, according to Search Engine Watch. So, when you conduct keyword research, focus on the long-tail keywords with geographic indicators, for example. If you’re new to SEO, there are resources like Moz and Ubersuggest; these sites provide SEO learning materials and free keyword tools.
Local SEO can drive small business development. In addition to finding the relevant long-tail keywords, listing your business is an easy way to rank in local SEO. When you list your business, you include your business name, address, and phone number. Voice search uses this information to respond to user queries.
There are a few directories, but you can start with the following listings:
· Bing
Optimize Content for User Intent
Understanding your customer is a crucial contributor to the development and growth of small businesses. Over the past few years, search engines have evolved to determine the implied meaning of search queries. In 2013, Google’s Hummingbird update was introduced with a focus on the contextual meaning of queries. When you double down on user intent, you increase opportunities for your small business to be found online
In addition to surveys and conversations with customers, making use of tools like AnswerThePublic and related searches at the bottom of the Google SERPs will help you see the types of questions people are asking. You can package this content in Frequently Answered Question (FAQ) pages.
Featured Snippets
FAQs will also help you earn a spot in featured snippets, also known as answer boxes. Featured snippets are a powerful tool to help you rank, even for text-based search, and can unlock new opportunities for your small business to rank. These snippets are known as Position O because they are displayed before the first organic search result. Earning a featured snippet can increase your visibility online — a boon for small business development
Search Engine Journal put together a comprehensive guide on getting Featured Snippets, suggesting a focus on question keywords:
- How does …
- How do …
- What is …
- How to …
Structured Data
Once you’ve started writing content for your audience, you can also help the search engines figure out what your content is about. According to Moz, Schema is used by Google, Bing, and Yandex. Opportunities for small business to harness Schema to expand reach are growing.
Structured data, or schema markup, allows you to add more information about your site. Think of it like data about data: the markup describes what your site is about so Google can serve it up in response to relevant queries. So, how’s that relevant for small business development?
In a blog post on optimizing for voice search, Neil Patel writes that, when conducting local voice search, users typically search for things like address, operating hours, and directions. You can use markup for this type of data .
You can even lobby your customers to expand your structured data. Reviews are another great tool for structured data, which you can start easily with Schema.org.
Mobile Responsiveness
Over the next few years, the majority of voice searches will come from mobile devices. Even if you have great content, your ranking — and your business development — will suffer if your site doesn’t load well. You can check your site’s mobile performance with Google’s free mobile-friendly test.
To find out more about voice search and its impact on your communication strategy, read our article on how conversational search is changing customer engagement.
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