Voice search is no longer a novelty. It is the default interface for tens of millions of daily queries, from quick factual lookups to local business searches to complex research questions asked through smart speakers and phone assistants.
How Voice Search Differs from Typed Search
The fundamental difference is conversational phrasing. Typed queries tend to be short and keyword-based (‘best Italian restaurant Sheffield’). Voice queries are complete sentences (‘What is the best Italian restaurant in Sheffield near the city centre?’).
This has specific implications for content strategy. Your pages need to include the natural language phrasing that matches how people speak, not just how they type. Long-tail question keywords become significantly more important.
The Voice Search and Featured Snippet Connection
Voice assistants (Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri) pull their spoken answers from featured snippets and structured data. This means winning featured snippet positions is the most direct path to voice search visibility.
The same content structure that wins a paragraph snippet wins voice: a clear, concise answer in 20-30 words immediately below a question-phrased heading. The difference is that for voice, you should also ensure the answer reads naturally when spoken aloud.
Writing for Voice: The Practical Principles
Content written for voice search has five characteristics:
Conversational language: write in the way people speak, not the way reports are written.
Question-phrased headings: use H2s like ‘How long does X take?’ rather than ‘Duration of X’.
Short answer sentences: the core answer should be under 30 words.
Second person: ‘You can find…’ rather than ‘Businesses can find…’
Local signals: for locally relevant content, include city, region, and neighbourhood references naturally within the text.
Local Voice Search: The High-Return Opportunity
A disproportionate share of voice queries have local intent: ’near me’, ‘open now’, ‘best X in [city]’. These queries are answered primarily from Google Business Profile data, Local Pack results, and pages with clear LocalBusiness schema.
For any business with local relevance, the local voice search optimisation checklist is:
Google Business Profile: 100% complete, with accurate hours, categories, and recent reviews.
LocalBusiness schema: implemented on your homepage with full address, phone, hours, and service area.
Location pages: dedicated pages for each major service area, with locally relevant content.
NAP consistency: identical Name, Address, Phone across all directories.
Speakable Schema
Speakable schema is a markup type that explicitly identifies sections of a page as appropriate for text-to-speech reading. It is currently used by Google Assistant for news articles and information content.
Implementing Speakable schema on your content pages flags them as voice-ready and may improve their visibility in voice search results. Add it in JSON-LD format, specifying the CSS selector or XPath of the speakable sections.