We know, we know. We’ve been hounding you about voice search for quite some time. Telling you how imperative it is that your back-end (of your website that is), or SEO, more specifically, is ready to go because voice search is on the rise. Well, here it is, and it is booming.

The rise of voice search is not surprising when you consider that in 2015 mobile searches surpassed desktop searches. Tie that in with Americans spending 17,600 minutes in the car each year and, bypassing a ticket by being hands-free, voice search was bound to be the next new thing.

What does this all mean?

So, what does this mean for you? Or, more importantly, what does this mean for your SEO strategy (or SEO marketers)? Well, it means that not only do you have to make sure your SEO encompasses phrases, keywords and terms that would be typed in, but also, you now have to encompass a whole new structure of phrasing… meaning, how we type in a search and how we voice search are done in two totally different ways.

For example, I want to find out what time my local pizza parlor will close tonight, I would type, ‘X pizza parlor closing times’. Whereas, if I used Siri for my search, I would naturally say, ‘what time does X pizza parlor close tonight?’ So as you can see, though it is the same question, it is having to be handled in two different ways. One query is in ‘short-hand’ (if you will) and the other is in a full sentence – a more natural form.

Whaaaaa! Voice search is SO. MUCH. WORK!

Well, yes, there is more work to do but, work that your business deserves. Most users will use voice search while driving, looking for a specific business in the local area of their destination. Users also use voice search when they are at home looking for local businesses near them (hence, “…near me”). Two very common and opportune times for your business to stand out. Don’t you want your business coming up during that voice query…?