Dealers, Are You Ready for Voice Search?

Today voice search is taking over the world. People have started using it because it is faster than a traditional search with its manual input of words. You can speak anywhere from 110 up to 150 words per minute, while the average typing speed is about 38-40 words per the same time interval. Besides, people also want quick answers to their requests. Often they are busy with other things, but they need information urgently. Now more than 50% of American teens and 41% of adults use voice search daily. There are 30 times more active requests in it than in the classic one. Another advantage is that 43.3% of voice search results have extended snippets compared to 40.6% of the usual text results. Moreover, Google “reads” extended snippets to users “out loud” and, thus, promotes your brand in its search. So today it is vitally important for dealers to optimize websites for voice search if you want to remain competitive and profitable in the automotive market.

Here are some hints and tips that will help you improve your ranking in voice search results:

• Use your content to answer questions. Voice search queries are longer than those of a common text. The average length of voice requests is 4.2 words, and of the text ones is 3.2 words. Long queries are less competitive and have a higher accuracy. They are used less often in the search, but they have high conversion rates. E.g. the number of requests that begin with the words “who”, “what”, “when”, “where” and “how” increased by 61%. Moreover, almost 10% of all voice queries begin with these words. On the contrary, for text requests this percentage is 3.7%. So make your content fully informative. It should answer the FAQ concerning your brand, inventory, services, and products, etc.
• Make a structural micro-markup depending on the type of your content. A micro-markup is something used by search engines. It helps them find the content and process it for further display in the search results. A structural micro-markup will make the information on your webpages structured and understandable for search engines. It will simplify their search for your content.
• Put your information in the Google Knowledge Graph. When you search for some data, you want to get not only the websites that contain it, but also the answers to your questions. The Knowledge Graph solves both of these issues by providing you with the web resources and possible answers to your queries. Introducing your content to the Google Knowledge Graph will rank your website better in the voice search results.
• Make sure that your content is well-structured. Use titles, subtitles, marked and numbered lists. This usage is important for good website optimization, a better ranking and higher positions in Google search results, thus, in the voice search results as well.
• Use third-party (independent) tools to get into the top search engine results. E.g. you can try question and answer services.
• Optimize your website for RankBrain. RankBrain is Google’s new self-learning system that builds search results by looking for relevant answers to a user’s query. Its results are based on such factors as search history, user’s behavior, page context, etc. After the new algorithm was applied the impact on Google search results by voice input improved by up to 15%. It allows you to rank better in the dialogue search results by keywords. This is the third most significant ranking indicator after the content and links. To optimize your site for RankBrain you need to optimize the dialogue search.
• Don’t forget about mobile devices. As most voice queries come from mobile devices it’s obvious that your website needs to be found through the mobile voice search. Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search systems rank responsive sites better as they are user-friendly and adjustable to any device. So responsiveness should be your main priority. Take care of your website’s loading speed as well.
• Focus on local optimization. Your dealer site should be available for users in the local search results. Many people use voice search while driving, especially when they need to find local businesses, get addresses, directions or find phone numbers. Local optimization includes your dealership’s name, address, corporate phone numbers and the most favorable route to your location.

The development of new technologies requires that you learn new strategies to keep pace with continual changes. It is important to be one step ahead of your competitors who may not even pay attention to voice search and its potential. Autoxloo is a proven solution provider for the auto industry. We offer dealerships our products and services to boost their conversion rates and sales as well as to improve their online presence. We offer you professional, high quality services for online positioning, promotion and support. Our On/Offsite SEO services will help your website get optimized for voice search quickly and easily.