The emergence of voice searching has transformed how we look for information online. As digitalization grows, voice search has affected how users safely discover the information they seek. It has ushered in a new trend in search engine optimization (SEO). Voice searching is the way of the future, and smart companies and digital marketers are focusing on Voice Search SEO as we speak. This article will examine the rise of voice search, its implication on SEO, and how businesses can adjust to meet this demand and reach their potential audience. No one can argue against the fact that we are living in a digital century, an era that has digitised practically every aspect of our lives; from the unemployment of Labor and Employment office to finding information at the nearest public library.
The Evolution of Voice Search Technology
Unlike in the 1960s, or even in the 1990s, today’s voice search technology is more than enough. Early versions of voice technology were often inaccurate, but now they’re quite good. Search by voice, thanks to its naturalness, is quicker than looking for something on the screen, and that’s why voice search through its interfaces, such as Google Assistant, Siri or Alexa has become the best way to perform such searches. As it turns out, investment into making voice-activated assistants more and more sophisticated resulted in wide adoption, which has catapulted search by voice from the fringe into something that everyone does.
The increased accuracy and reliability of voice search technology is leading to it being used on any device across a busines. Google voice search for business, for example, provides local business search with details about the company, such as a phone number and contact details. With more and more people turning to voice search to find their nearest shop, restaurant or salon, it is important to have a business voice search to maintain or increase your visibility. This obvious use of voice search is one of the most striking examples of how user behaviour is evolving in line with a significant shift in the overall SEO landscape. People are increasingly surveying Google with audio commands rather than typed queries. This shift has huge consequences for businesses, as they will need to master the nuances of sound SEO in order to keep up or even improve their search rankings.
Impact of Voice Search on SEO Strategies
The mainstreaming of voice search is also shifting the basic skillsets that SEO professionals must acquire. While classic SEO is still all about concepts such as keyword density, backlinks and crawlability, voice search optimisation (VSO) techniques are increasingly being employed as distinct methodologies. Typically, voice search results are consultations that are longer and more conversational – think along the lines of ‘Tell me what to order’ rather than ‘Dim sum restaurant in London’ or ‘When do the Titans play this season?’ instead of ‘NFL schedule’. The implications for content creators, SEO and information architects are profound. Rather than optimising content for robots, algorithms and keywords, content must be structured for human consumption via conversation. This basically shifts the balance from authority and seniority to ascent and inclination. Instead of optimising for keyword density (see below), natural language processing (NLP) and long-tail keywords are the names of the game. And you have to use entirely different approaches because the way people speak is completely different to the way they type.
Furthermore, the importance of local SEO was enhanced from the rise of voice search. When people use voice search, they’re often looking for information related to a specific task and nearby location (e.g. ‘Nearby restaurants,’ ‘Plumbers near me,’ ‘Plumbers in [city]’). So, this means that businesses need to ensure their optimisation efforts for local voice search queries, especially those businesses that do well using local listings in order to capture nearby consumers who use voice assistants to search for services. Schema markup is one of the most important tactics implemented for voice search optimisation to make businesses and brands come up in local voice search listing. Some of the actions they can do are Google My Business optimisation, monitor listings across the web and synch NAP accuracy. It’s not just about voice search for keywords, it’s about creating an easy, relevant and location-based user experiences overall.
Voice Search and the User Experience
The increase in voice search usage is also correlated with user behaviour and expectations, as speaking is a quicker way of searching compared with typing on the keyboard – especially when you’re short on time or your hands are busy. The upside of voice search is that you will get the information you’ve asked for much faster and have a quicker process. The impact of these changes in search habits is huge because the voice-to-search predicts that the user experience, and therefore websites too, must also change. Websites will need to adapt, as new optimisation methods will create new ways of speaking not just typing, comparable with the days when internet-savvy people would on a regular basis write ‘Google it’. The voice search requires a question rather than a search term, hence content needs to be more conversational in order to make it sound natural in an answering machine.
Furthermore, voice search user experience goes beyond content. It also means making websites mobile-friendly since most voice searches happen on mobile devices. Page speed, mobile compatibility and user interface design contribute to a site’s performance in voice search. This means that businesses competing in voice search need to focus not only on keywords but on user experience. By creating content that fits with the conversational nature of voice search and by building a mobile-friendly site experience, businesses can better serve voice search users and improve their search performance.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Voice Search
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a major component behind voice search, as without AI-powered algorithms in natural language processing, humans wouldn’t be able to talk to our voice assistants. These pieces of technology allow voice search to understand and respond to complex voice queries, which in turn helps them provide more accurate and relevant search results. As AI develops further, voice search will also develop. The more we interact with voice assistants, the better they will get at recognising context, tone and user intent. This will help make the transition from human communication to machine communication, or vice versa, much smoother, making voice-activated search feel like a natural part of our everyday lives.
Clearly, understanding the role of AI in voice search is extremely valuable for businesses and marketers trying to develop successful voice search SEO strategies. Just as it helps voice assistants learn how to understand a query, AI helps them learn how content is valued in search results. Businesses can use an AI-powered understanding of user intent to anticipate and answer people’s questions, ensuring their content resonates with voice search algorithms. Furthermore, using natural language AI, built with machine learning, on vast amounts of data enables businesses to gain deeper and richer insights into voice search behaviour. They can then utilise these insights to create more targeted and effective voice search marketing campaigns tailored to the purpose and context behind people’s queries. This ensures that they reach as many people as possible, and stay ahead of the game in the next phase of digital disruption.
Voice Search and the Future of Local SEO
One of the strongest effects of voice search is on local SEO. This is especially true for various small businesses across multiple industries. ‘Many of the voice queries we’re seeing now are what we call “near-me” searches: a query that entails the words “near me” along with another search type such as “Where can I get Mexican food near me?” For businesses that want to improve their online visibility, focusing on local voice queries is now at the forefront of great SEO.’This is just one of the ways in which voice search is shaping up to provide a massive, potentially overwhelming opportunity for local businesses. For example, making it to the top of Google’s first page of business listings in voice search is heavily dependent on ensuring that your business information is properly indexed with Google My Business, to make sure you show up correctly to potential customers. That leads to more business for local companies.
In terms of the future of local SEO, it all rides on the advancement of voice search technology. As voice assistants become better and more intelligent, it is likely that they will serve more localised, personalised search results. So, if voice assistants are coming for our livelihood as searchers, we need to become more hyper-local with our optimisation strategies – using local keywords, creating localised content and getting more local customers to write reviews about the good in-store experiences are now more important than ever before to improve voice search rankings. Going forward, the voice search experience may even be integrated with augmented reality smart devices to improve the overall local search experience and make local search even more critical in a business’s voice search SEO strategy.
Best Practices for Voice Search Optimization
Companies who want to thrive in the voice search economy will need to adopt webmaster and content best practices specific to voice search optimization. If you haven’t read my other articles about how voice assistants work, you might assume step one is to make your site more crawler-friendly, and that can certainly help. But if that’s the only thing you do, you’re missing the point. What sets voice search apart from traditional text-based searches is people’s tendency to write like they talk, and they talk differently. If you’re set on picking keywords, here are some things to consider: Instead of thinking in single keywords, like bakers, think in clusters of language. Text searches tend to be short and functional, such as ‘bakers’. But people talking to virtual assistants are usually longer in length and more relaxed. So, think about voice search terms in clusters: things like ‘artisan bread’, ‘how to run a bakery’, or ‘bakers in London’. People use human-sounding language when talking to their assistants – not the super-specific keywords of SEO ‘Keywords’ are too vague for the super-human world of voice search Voice assistants can tell a lot about you and your situation. Using ‘bakers’ as an example, it will be able to understand your location, and whether you’re asking for the long list of local bakeries or a special one because you’re celebrating a birthday. Or you might ask for a baker in your local county, and it will be able to determine the closest one to you. Instead of focusing on single keywords, like ecommerce companies might with Google search, concentrate on long-tail keywords: phrases of three or more terms that combine keywords with natural-sounding language. This strategy will help you steer closer to the direct, human-sounding questions people will be asking your site. Creating good content to help you with this involves not only thinking carefully about questions that your customers will ask, but also how you can answer these questions in one of the two main features of voice search: featured snippets, also known as ‘position zero’.
The second aspect is local SEO optimisation. We’ve already noted the preponderance of local searches in voice queries. It’s little surprise, because voice search often answers the question ‘where’? In 2018, a study by Hubspot found that nearly 50 per cent of smartphone searches were local. Applicable to every aspect of business marketing and content creation, these findings have profound implications for local businesses. Making sure your company has a presence in Google My Business listings, and then maintaining and enhancing those listings, is critical. Local keyword integration, as well as schema markup to signal implied semantic meaning for search engines, are must-dos. Making sure the website is accessible on mobile devices, and the pages load quickly, is imperative because so many of the voice-served search results emanate from this channel. Any other sites that host your company online need to be enclosed in a cloud of locally oriented content. Making sure this happens is as much of a mandate for today’s businesses as having a decent website.
Conclusion
The way that voice search has changed the SEO landscape is that businesses and marketers are adjusting and changing strategies to accommodate that behaviour and using the way that searchers have changed the way that they’re searching to help improve their visibility for when people are using voice search. Voice search and natural language processing has been changing, and will continue to do so, powered by things like AI. It’s a tool that consumers are going to be using more for searches, especially when it comes to things like local search. Searchers might be more likely to use their voice search on their phone while they’re driving to find something in their local community because it’s faster than typing. Searchers are becoming more reliant on voice search, and local businesses need to make sure they can show up for that. They can do that by making sure that they are dialed in with voice search SEO and best practices. Voice search SEO is an exciting space for businesses that want to keep up with digital marketing practices and continue to be relevant in the years ahead.