If you had to put a bet on what the “next big thing” in popular technology was going to be over the next five years, voice search would be a logical pick. The increased popularity of gizmos you can command and ask questions is an indication that your site needs to be optimized for these devices and the way people talk to them. What does that mean for car dealerships in particular? Let’s examine that question, and help you figure out whether this is something you can handle on your own or whether you need to bring in an internet marketing agency for car dealerships.
Voice Search Is Popular Across Several Demographics
As is the case when new technology comes out, the group using it the most skews younger. But of those who have tried voice search at any age, few of them seem dissatisfied or want to go back to old methods. Voice search is popular with mobile devices, of course, but what might be a little surprising is that people also seem to be using it with smart speakers and desktop computers. Smart speakers are coming, that much is clear. In a decade, probably fewer homes won’t have them than those that do.
What Does This Mean For SEO?
Whether you’re excited about the advent of voice search or whether you couldn’t care less about it personally isn’t the issue. For car dealerships, you have to care, because if your site is not optimized correctly for voice search then you won’t be found, and you’ll miss out on sales. Voice search is different from typed searches in two ways. One, voice searches are longer, and two, they are more conversational. In other words, when someone has a voice query, they ask in much more detail than they do when they’re typing, and they phrase the question differently as well.
When people search for something online like “used cars near me,” your website might rank near the top of the SERPs. However, with voice search, they might ask something like “Hey Google, where are used car dealerships near me that sell Honda Accords?” See the difference? People are less likely to type in that much information because they want to save some effort. They have no compunctions about asking long, conversational questions to their devices.
Can You Handle This Yourself?
What this means is that your SEO strategy is going to have to change in several ways. Your keyword research is going to have to be different. You’re going to have to create more FAQ pages since Google often pulls the answers to questions directly from those. You’re also going to have to optimize to try and get in the “featured snippet” when someone asks a question. If they see that the answer to their question is in the featured snippet that comes from your site, then they are likely to visit there.
If this seems like a lot to digest, that’s because it is. This is only a taste of how voice search is going to change your practical SEO. Is that reason to panic? No, of course not, though it could very well convince you to hire an internet marketing agency if you aren’t using one yet.
You’re under no obligation to hire an SEO company, but there’s no question that voice search has complicated things in the past couple of years. There’s going to be new best practices for how to optimize your site for voice search, but those are still very much in development. Handling this on our own is going to be challenging for car dealerships, and you probably have other things to worry about. With the rise of voice search technology, you might want to call an SEO company without delay and put them on the payroll.
