What Dental Teams Need To Know About Voice Searching And SEO

You have likely been out and about and have heard someone say, “Hey Siri, find an Italian restaurant near me.” This is known as voice searching, and now, to compete online, your website needs to be voice search optimised.

Voice search optimisation is an increasingly important SEO strategy when it comes to staying ahead in the ever-evolving digital world. As voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Home become increasingly popular, businesses like dental teams need to optimise their content in order to stay visible in search results and stay top of mind with consumers.

Voice search refers to inputting a question or command into a digital voice assistant or voice recognition software to receive a search result. These searches are becoming increasingly popular, accounting for almost 20% of all searches made in the US, and this number is only likely to rise. So, how does this impact your dental SEO? Read on to find out!

How does it differ from regular SEO?

Voice search optimisation requires different tactics than traditional SEO. When users conduct a voice search, they are more likely to phrase their inquiries in a conversational manner, meaning that content optimised for voice search must reflect a conversational tone with commonly-asked questions or phrases people may use when searching for a particular product or service.

Thus, dental surgeries should also focus on creating content that provides direct answers to questions people may ask, as that is what voice search technology is intended to do. For example, if a dentist can fit an oral implant, then the website should include content that answers direct questions such as “what types of dental implants can I get?”

Structured data

Another factor to consider when optimising for voice search is the use of structured data, also known as schema markup. Structured data uses code to provide additional information about a webpage, such as a phone number or address, which can help search engines accurately interpret a webpage’s content and make it easier for voice search results to offer up direct answers to users.

Local voice searches

Yes, people use voice search to look for dental surgeries.

And so, dental teams should also focus on making their content as local as possible. Voice search technology is excellent for hyper-local searches, so including geographic information in many pages of content can help your business show up in more voice search results. For instance, someone may search for “emergency dental surgery near me’’, which will be helpful if they have a toothache. If your dental surgery website has the words “local emergency dentist” and is linked via location, then the search engine will pick up and rank your dental surgery.

Fast loading

Finally, businesses should also optimise their websites’ loading speed and page structure. This is because the faster a page loads, the more likely it is that search engines will pick it up and serve up the content in voice search results. Additionally, since voice search technology reads web pages like a book, having a well-structured website with hierarchical page titles, simple URLs, and a well-organised site map can help voice assistants to navigate your website more effectively.

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