The Rising Popularity of Voice Search and its Impact on SEO Landscape

With each year presenting new technological advancements that change business boundaries and dynamics, focusing on using the new scopes and tools can be a daunting task, especially in the field of social media marketing vis-à-vis digital marketing.

As an SEO marketer, you can install an internet voice search to redefine or break SEO modalities and conventions. With extensive adoption and usage of voice search technology, markets have been undergoing tremendous transformations.

• With the advent of IBM’s Watson in the voice technology field, people have been leveraging voice recognition features for their Q&A needs.
• Google, Apple, Amazon Echo and Microsoft have all come up with voice speakers. Who doesn’t know about Alexa? It’s freaking famous. Google Assistant came in 2016 with Google Home, another smart, super-intelligent speaker.
• Experts predict that Home will surpass Alexa by 2020. The voice recognition pathway has improved a lot since its introduction. The accuracy element varies from companies, but users are getting what they want.
• Its biggest effect on SEO comes through natural language, keyword length, semantic search, local search, and question words, and SERPS.
• Voice has even impacted e-commerce as consumer’s uses it extensively to buy goods and services.
• As many as 65% voice owners have bought things through virtual speakers/assistants.

Some prominent features

For SEO operators and firms, voice search can refashion your marketing directives and how you get search results. It’s crucial to imbibe a human and natural conversational approach in your content.

• Although the length of a viable voice search question on Cortana is just three words, some text queries were also just two words.
• Studies show and successful voice search questions, that got the maximum number of clicks and impressions, comprised 3 words. They have a longer tail.
• Surprisingly, natural speech is actually longer in this regard. What you need to remember is that voice search is our adaption and still in an evolutionary stage. Our habits will evolve too. We will adapt to it better with time.
• This feature hasn’t caused any major change in search behavior to spike paid/organic searches for retail brands.
• Character counts remain the same. With time, voice search might adorn a more specific, personal, and vividly descriptive approach.
• Question phrases are a significant characteristic of voice search. With curiosity, we prefer exploring new information and keep questioning.
• Data shows a huge rise in conversational words to question. These phrases entail higher commercial pitch in natural speech.
• So, the drift is local businesses must be ready for a change.

Gauging the effect

A critical analysis of voice search would be apt to affirm whether it’s a revolution or a peeping disruption that you don’t know about it. To start with the basics, it’s important to know the dynamics of the search engine market.

Google has a hegemony with over 70% shares. Its officials say that 20% of mobile questions are all voice searches. However, they also reported that the maximum number of Google searches come from mobile devices and not computers. So, is there an explosion in the use of voice search?

• Experts predict that over 50% of searches will include speech or images. A simple and quick way to measure the explosive aspect of voice search is to assess the most popular voice search terms.
• The ‘show me’ and ‘near me’ terms are all in sync with SEO. If you’re looking for an eatery for example, you’ll type your interest field, restaurants, food, recipes, reviews, etc.
• Then comes your city, street, or area to make the search easier. You may feel that voice search isn’t different from basic keywords in the search box, but here’s the catch.
• AI records the user’s voice audio and delivers it to the APIs of voice recognition, which they convert into text.

Some noteworthy predictions

A semantic search of the word-based search will gain more importance. In addition to keywords, Google thrives on numerous other factors. These are your search pattern or previous searches. Google can then produce search results in compliance with what it thinks you’re looking for.

• When you search films California from your computer in CA, Google understands that you’re probably looking for films in the area and about the state, rather than information on CA.
• Your content should cater to your customers, both in terms of functionality and tone. In this voice search era, optimized content targets customers/followers. It doesn’t cater to search engines.
• So, the days of bland and banal keyword-ridden content is now gone. When you get Instagram likes through any tool, make sure your content caters to your followers.
• Listen to what your customers, both current and potential have to say about your brand during their social media engagements with you.
• Keep your sales and customer service units on their toes. The words they use and the way they channelize parlance to create your content in FAQ or blog posts matter a lot.
• Your website should be mobile-first and there’s no compromise in this regard.

Optimizing voice search

With growing versatility and accuracy in voice recognition technology, you need to leverage its benefits for your SEO needs. Google underlines specific reasons to use voice-activated speakers.

• Voice search allows you to do multiple tasks at a time. It helps you to get instant information and answers. It helps marketers or any average internet user to perform things faster than any other tool. Concisely, it makes your daily life easier as you don’t have to type your questions.
• You optimize voice search in search marketing as well. It’s a boon for local and large brands.
• Both chain firms and small brands looking to optimize voice search for regional SEO should adapt to voice search at the earliest. That’s called location-specific details.

An overall impact

Searches now have questions. They are longer as well. Queries have a clear objective now. For marketers, it’s crucial to underline any pivotal or viable queries and create, curate, and optimize relevant content in compliance with the query.

To be at the zenith, you need to optimize and revive your SEO strategies. As you type commands, you can easily delve into queries. With voice commands, you can get prompt and quick results.

Pete Campbell is a social media manager and has immense knowledge about email marketing and Instagram promotion. He delights his clients by helping them buy real Instagram likes. He loves to travel, write and play baseball.