What Does Voice Search Do?
Voice search is the method of browsing the internet or doing searches by communicating your request to the smartphone or home assistance devices such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa. The innovation uses a voice-recognition technology that picks whatever the user says and converts it into texts to do searches. The future is here!
The beginning of the current voice search technology can be traced back to 2008 when Google launched the Google voice search app for iPhone. And ever since then, more contributions came in which includes Siri by Apple, Cortana by Microsoft, and Alexa by Amazon.
In 2018, voice searches were given more trial by people due to its accuracy more than the previous years, all thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). That same year, voice searches account for 20% of Google searches, 10% of Baidu, 25% of Bing queries, and estimated 50% of all queries on search engines by the end of 2020. This result shows that voice search has come to stay; it is up to businesses and website owners to adopt another new strategy.
What Is Voice Search Optimization?
Voice search engine optimization or Voice SEO is simply a digital marketing strategy that aims at making website contents, blogs, and videos visible on search engine result pages (SERPs) for voice searches. This strategy uses the same techniques as the Local SEO but requires more technicality and little adjustment to the existing website.
Getting Your Business Ready for Voice Search Engine Optimization.
How Do I Optimize Voice Search?
Like SEO, voice search engine optimization is just as crucial to both big and local businesses. Below are the steps to take to optimize your online presence for voice searches;
1. Optimize your business listings.
Google my business profile is a Google initiative platform, so it is up to them to ensure that it favors all internet search updates. And it is up to small business owners to optimize their listings by ensuring that their address and other business details are accurate. The business listing details must also correspond with those on the business website.
2. Create original content.
Small businesses must have been conversant with the word keyword because they have to include them in their posts to rank on SERPs. As for voice search engine optimization, they have to add natural language keyword phrases. The reason being that it was discovered that using voice searches is like communicating with a friend, so people love to keep it natural. How can you create natural content?
Finding questions, and providing answers– that’s all it takes to create natural content. This simple principle works because voice searches always come in the form of questions. If a person is to find the nearest restaurant in Charleston in a voice search, it becomes “where are the best restaurants in Charleston.” By preparing your post in a natural format, you are providing answers to people’s queries.
3. Improve page speed.
As this is relevant in local SEO, so also it’s a factor that should be considered in voice search engine optimization. One of the reasons people use voice search is because they want quick results. Therefore, websites need to improve their website loading speed to be among the result of SERPs. The average loading time for the mobile landing page is 15 seconds, but small business should strive to make their’s lesser than 3 seconds.
4. Create a mobile-friendly website.
Most voice searches are performed on smartphones and other mobile devices. Therefore, a business must have a mobile-friendly website. These include using compressible images, making information easier to find, and creating a website that will redress to fit the mobile screen without cutting or hiding any text in the content.
5. SSL and HTTP certificate.
The security of your website matters to search engines like Google, and it’s one of the criteria for ranking high on them. The SSL certificates are used to secure data transfer between the website and the server, improve conversion rate, and builds customer trust. On the installation of an SSL certificate on a website, it activates a padlock and converts the HTTP protocol to HTTPS.
This HTTPs is a prerequisite for ranking high on Google, so likewise for voice searches. The company had once earlier announced back in 2014 that HTTPS would be a priority for ranking high, and a study by backlinko reveals that 70.4% of Google results have the HTTPS prefix.
6. Test.
For now, the number of people using voice search is not much, so it’s up to you to test the result of the changes put in place. Conduct searches related to your website by using each of the available voice searches apps and devices, and take note of the result pulled up by each one. By doing this, you can find out how search engines are gathering the results, and what others are using that is not on your website.
On the final note, the world is changing, and we must also adapt to whatever development associated with it. The people of the world are ready to spend more to derive their comfort and get things done faster. It is now the duty of organizations, and businesses to restrategize to tap from consumer quest to find comfort.
How Does Voice Search Affect SEO?
Voice search optimization is the newest marketing strategy with its myriads of benefits, which includes;
- More website traffic.
- A high conversion rate of visitors to customers.
- It increases the sales of products and services.
- It improves customer engagement.
- It enhances website visibility and creates brand awareness.
