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Optimize your web page for voice search

RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers

Published: December 2, 2022

Somewhere between 40% and 70% of people who are searching for you on the internet are doing so by using their voices (depending on the survey).
This could be on a smartphone, a computer or a smart device and using Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant.
You need to be able to reach those people. Voice search operates differently from typing in a query and then reading the results. Where you can count on a person reading typed-in results in a way that gives you a bit of time to explain yourself, voice search results are keyed to a different view.
Here are a few tips to optimize your page for voice search, thanks to suggestions by our friends at Good2BSocial.
People will be looking for easily digestible, brief and simple answers to their voice queries. Provide specific answers to a query like “search for a divorce lawyer in Akron” on your landing page.
Most of the time, voice searchers are looking for a local attorney. Make your address and contact information prominent on the same page. In fact, voice search won’t even recognize your page unless it has a prominent address and phone number.
Optimize your local SEO with local content, social media profiles, links, and community goings-on (“I will be at the high school sportsball game. Come and join me and support our team!”). Keep these up to date on your website and social media, and make sure, again, that everything is optimized for mobile devices.
Use internal links to the rest of your site to help guide the search engines to the right answer.
Simplify, simplify, simplify. Know what people are searching for and provide that answer in as few words as possible. Very few people who use voice search are going to wase through reams of words before figuring out if the page satisfies the search. After all, they are talking, not typing. Respond in kind.
With all that, you still need to keep up with all the changes in SEO—particularly with Google, but with all the voice search engines. This column tries to keep up with all that, but changes come out really fast and furious (one estimate is that Google tweaks its algo twice a day on average). So keep up!


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