Hey Google: What is Voice & Local Search?
How many of you reading this blog have an alexa or some sort of voice assistant in close proximity? According to Juniper Research, digital voice assistants are supposed to triple to 8 billion by 2023.
Even the small effort of clicking on a link can be replaced by the two way conversational nature of voice search. With an increase in user experience and adopters, voice assistants and voice search will continue to grow exponentially.
What is a Featured Snippet?
You have already seen a featured snippet, because I know you have done searches on Google. A featured snippet is a summary of an answer to a user’s query (search request), which is displayed on top of Google search results. It’s extracted from a webpage, and includes the page’s title and URL.
How does a part of a webpage become a featured snippet on google? There are specific optimization methods that can be implemented on web pages to increase the chances of appearing as a featured snippet on Google. First it's important to know about the different types of featured snippets.
Types of Featured Snippets:
- Paragraph
- List
- Table
Also, it's important to note that featured snippets do appear to come from the top 10 google rankings for said search request. However, the featured snippet does not always come from the first ranking on google, it can be 3rd for example or any of the top ten results. This is huge. You can earn a featured snippet being in the 4th position for example, and then end up ranking #1 in result, which will lead to a big increase in organic click through rate, and thus sales.
Moz highlights that the three types of featured snippets consist of paragraph format (pictured above), list format, and table format. According to Getstat, among these three types of featured snippets, paragraph snippets consist of 81.95% of the total featured snippets. Since all three of these types of featured snippets are of short form, it's important to be concise with your web page information. I wouldn't focus strictly on featured snippets first, due to the fact that you need to rank high on google before. Since the topic for this blog is voice search and local search, Moz’s guide to seo explains in detail more about search engine optimization and ranking on google. Now this may seem like a lot of information from one source, but Moz is just that good, and there is another valuable article highlighting optimization for featured snippets you should look at after the SEO beginner guide.
Voice Search & Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are extremely important in terms of voice search. When you ask Siri or Alexa a question, it doesn't just spew out every search result it finds online. Voice search has to choose what answer to provide.
Where is the voice assistant or device supposed to find a short piece of relevant information for the user? Often, featured snippets are where voice assistants pull information together for a quick response. Because users are often looking for specific information when using voice search, long term keywords are popular. Businesses must perform keyword research, and modify their seo efforts to include the frequently asked questions people use in voice search in order to reach them effectively.
Why is Local Search so Important
According to a study from TMP 82% of local searchers follow up offline via an in-store visit, phone call or purchase. Another statistic to highlight the importance of local search is that 61% of local searches result in a purchase. Sure local business can be found from referrals and friends and family, but because 74% of users conduct searches locally (according to Kelsey Group) its extremely important to have a presence in local search results.
Google my business is a great free tool for a business to be present on google search results and maps. For your best shot at appearing on local search results, it's important to have a consistent NAP. If you're anything like me, you might get excited when hearing the word nap, sounds relaxing right? but this is an acronym related to SEO doesn't mean nap time. It means name, address, and phone number, which should all be consistent amongst search results. Intellitonic, a digital marketing firm located in bellingham, has a blog on basic seo tips for your google my business page.
Thanks for reading till the end of my post, as always, I hope that this blog led you to some useful resources along with new information. In terms of a small life update related to this post, I am looking forward to my digital marketing class tomorrow morning, where the creator of the most recently linked blog post and founder of intellitronic will be talking more about voice and local search!