Voice search – how speaking affects SEO

More and more of us are using voice search to find results and that is having a difference to the way sites are optimised for SEO. Siri, Cortana and the rest all now interpret our needs and use the words we speak rather than those we type – to deliver search results.

The differences in how we express ourselves present an opportunity for savvy site owners to optimise for certain speech traits in their site copy.

What does this mean for site SEO?

Many searches are now prefixed or suffixed with conversational phrases such as:

• “Where can I get…”
• “When is …”
• “Are there any tickets left for…”
• “What time are you open…”

all of these questions are the kind of prefix that we are seeing in voice searches.

What does this mean for PPC?

Cheap keywords! We are finding that searches specifically targeted at voice search phrases are often considerably cheaper than the orthodox phrases we have often optimised for in the past.