The Importance of Voice Search for your Car Dealership

You want to get your dealership in front of your customers. This used to mean billboards and TV ads, then it meant websites and organic marketing, now there’s another wrinkle you have to consider called voice search. Don’t be scared. Phantom Copy is here to tell you all about the importance of voice search for your car dealership. Don’t worry we can talk you through what it is, why you should care, and how you can get out in front of this trend and turn voice searchers into car buyers.

What is Voice Search and Who Uses It?

We don’t want to shame anybody that doesn’t know what voice search is or how to use it, but most people do use it and nearly everyone has the ability to. Any modern smartphone is capable of voice search, your laptop or personal computer can even do it, and smart speakers and other smart home devices use it as their only means of search.

Do you think that smart home devices are just a trend or a fad? Think again. Currently, 52% of Americans have a voice search enabled smart home device in their living room right now. That likely won’t be changing anytime soon either as two-thirds of the people that already have a smart home device say that they couldn’t imagine living without one now. Moreover, 71% of consumers prefer voice search over traditional typing. Without many people even noticing, voice search has become one of the chief ways that people search.

Woman dressed in white using voice search

In fact, take a look at some of the demographic below.

18-24: 59% use voice search at least once a day
25-49: 65% use voice search at least once a day
50+: 57% use voice search at least once a day

This means everyone is basically using voice search on a regular basis. What’s more, the age demographic that uses it the most is also the most sought after by dealerships. If you’re not thinking about voice search, you are going to miss out.

How Do People Use Voice Search?

This is a very relevant question. What if people only use voice search to ask about the weather or to learn the score of the big game? If that’s truly the case, then why would a car dealer care at all? It turns out, that people are using voice search for far more than that.

The two most common reasons people are going to end up on your dealership’s website is to buy a car or to do car-buying research. Voice search-optimized content works in both cases. It’s estimated that 51% of consumers use voice search while researching products. On the flip side, 52% of Google voice searchers are searching with the intent to get more information about sales, deals, and promotions. A large majority of consumers will also use voice search to find a local business. This is where it comes in handy to have a highly optimized Google Business Profile so that you know you are showing up and that people are being sent in the right direction.

How to Write Content for Voice Search?

Do you remember Ask Jeeves? It used to be a search engine—no one knows what it is now—but in reality, it was ahead of its time. The idea was to create a search engine that used natural language to produce answers to questions. Try typing a question into Google right now and see what happens. First off, it works just fine, reading intent in the question asked. Secondly, you’ll probably get a visit from our friend the featured snippet.

Don’t know what a featured snippet is? We wrote a whole post on them. Here’s a brief primer though. A featured snippet is a snippet of content from a web page that Google believes contains a relevant answer to your question.

Guess what? You can learn a lot about how to write for voice search by first studying how to write for featured snippets. In fact, over 40% of voice search results come from featured snippets, and that number will likely continue to increase as search engines like Google continue to push the featured snippet feature.

What Content Can Rank for Voice Search?

Sadly, your vehicle description pages will likely never show up as an answer to a voice search. Voice searches are just not specific enough to drill into a dealership’s online inventory like that. Where you can shine with voice search outside of location searches is in your marketing content, especially in your blog content.

Your content should answer a question, and that question should be more complicated than, “Who Sell Cars in Las Vegas?” Use the brands that you specialize in, the services you provide, and the models that people come to you the most for as a jumping-off point. Here are a few content ideas that work with voice search:

What 2022 Mazda CX-5 Trims Offer Leather?
How Long Can You Go Between Oil Changes in a Toyota?
Best 2022 Trucks For Towing
Easy Method For Testing Tread Wear

Interestingly, a large number of search queries contain common trigger words including “how,” “what,” “easy,” and “best.” Keeping this in mind while you are crafting your keyword and building your content will help ensure that you rank for voice search.

Will Writing for Voice Search Hurt Normal Search?

There are a lot of common misconceptions in SEO, and many of them we have already written about. For example, some people believe that writing local content is a waste of effort, and we strongly beg to differ. Another misconception is that gearing your content marketing towards voice search will hurt how you rank traditionally.

Voice search optimized posts can easily take the bulk of your posts and still rank well in traditional search. In fact, to rank for the voice you first have to rank organically anyway. Even when search engines like Google are not picking the featured snippet, they are going to pick something that is ranked high or ranked in their “People also ask” section of search.

Using Voice Search to Bridge Gaps

How many people in your area don’t speak English as their first language or even speak it at all? They can use voice search in their native language and get results that are translated from one of your pages. Google can read over 120 different languages. Sure, they can do this on a normal browser as well, but this method ends up being easier.

There’s another way you can use these smart devices to assist your business as well. Having a Spanish-speaking employee is a huge help when working with Spanish-speaking customers. But what if it’s their day off, or what if someone speaks a different language entirely? Did you know that you can use a smartphone to translate for you even from speech? Now you can connect with any customer.

The Phantom Copy Difference

Have you heard of Phantom Copy before? Well, you are on our website right now. We are not just SEO experts here, but also automotive experts. We can talk about engines and trim levels until we are blue in the face, and we can ensure that you rank in all manner of searches including voice search. Learn about our blog packages, ask about our custom content, or find the perfect piece already written on our marketplace. Phantom Copy is here to help kick your content marketing into high gear. Rise above the content graveyard with top-tier content that can actually rank—even for voice search!