Today’s modern world allows users worldwide to find information exceptionally easily, being only a click away for most people. This can be done from many devices, such as computers, phones, tablets, and TVs. However, voice search methods are slowly changing everything, including SEO.
With voice recognition software being used more and more by users daily, it is only a matter of time before it becomes an important aspect looking into the future.
How Did Voice Search Systems Origin?
Voice technology and voice search have been around for a while. However, it wasn’t until a decade ago that it started to grab people’s attention in 2010. That year, IBM introduced Watson, a voice recognition computer that could answer any question the users threw at it.
It didn’t take long for other giants like Google and Apple to follow this path, with the former releasing Voice Search.
Google Voice Search was released after being developed in Google Labs. Its initial main features were somewhat more complicated than nowadays: users had to set up the service by calling out a phone number from their contacts list, after which they were prompted to say the keywords.
The search results would appear on a blank web page after the process. Since then, the voice search option has become much more straightforward. Today, it is compatible with almost every application and product available, and it’s increasingly sensitive to different tones, pronunciations, and accents.
Meanwhile, Apple developed Siri, which was implemented in iPhone 4S. A bit later, Microsoft introduced its project, Cortana; and Amazon did the same with Alexa and Echo.
Nowadays, these searchers have become a sort of “personal assistant” for users, being used by many things. Therefore, its constant evolution has started to impact searches and SEO directly.
Ways Voice Search is Making SEO Change
People and their interactions with technology, such as advanced artificial intelligence chats or voice search assistants, are making a revolution within the Internet that directly affects SEO. There are many ways it impacts optimization, and these are some of them:
Keyword Length
Voice search’s significant impact on SEO is related to the length of the keywords. This occurs because the spoken language isn’t as concise as written words are. Queries made through voice are always longer than the two to four keyword searches marketers use to work with.
According to many experts, the average of voice search words is around 29 per inquiry. All this means that if marketers don’t want to lose the voice search market, they will need to use long-tail keywords more frequently.
Keywords Nature
The keywords’ nature relates to how people refer to an inquiry. There are many ways to do it, with questions starting with who, where, what, and more.
People who use these features usually rely on many questions, meaning companies must start including interrogatory statements in the content. Remember that when voice searchers answer a question, it provides a single answer instead of a full page like average searches.
Conversational Language
Users who utilize voice search speak to their assistants as if talking to another human. This means that they’re using long sentences but also conversational and casual sentences. According to Google statistics, 70% of the requests to an assistant are done through natural language.
Dealing with this situation is relatively easy. First, it is necessary to ensure the keyword research does not use overcomplicated words. Avoiding a severe and corporate tone is also recommended since the main focus is regular searches.
Semantic Searches
Opposed to lexical searches that take literal matches of keywords, a semantic search attempts to find the user’s intent of searching within the context given. Analyzing user search history, global searches, keyword spelling, and the user location also aids this.
RankBrain by Google is a known artificial intelligence designed to recognize these used words and phrases to improve search outcomes. Such independent thinking quality helps handle queries more sophisticatedly and make pages relevant to context and intent.
SERPs
Around 75% of voice search results rank in the top three search engine result pages, also known as SERPs. Rich answer boxes answer these at the top of the outcome; featured snippets include almost 30% of search pages.
The extracts of websites provide credit to the original webpage in voice search, and the user interface for typing searches. A brand must be on the first page to appear in featured snippets.
Other Important SEO-Related Things that Voice Search Affects
Among the most affected types of SEO, local is the one that suffers the most impact from voice searches. This occurs because people tend to prefer searching for business locally using voice. Dealing with it is very simple: companies have to optimize content in a way it attracts queries related to “near me.”
Another frequent method to solve this is supporting the company’s website with a Google My Business Page.
The loading speed of a website is another factor that is affected by voice search. The better a site performs, the more likely it will rank higher, getting new ways to attract traffic and new audiences.
Why is Mobile-Friendliness So Important?
Voice searches have acquired a lot of notoriety and use among mobile phone users. Additionally, companies like Google have pushed and influenced mobile-friendliness because its indexing and content ranking primarily happens on mobile versions.
Suppose a website isn’t optimized for portable devices that provide an excellent mobile experience. In that case, you have little to almost no chance of ranking first between voice searches, even if you’re the only brand on the topic. Optimization isn’t only for voice ranking but also for typing.
How to Adapt to Voice Search?
There are many recommended steps and stages brands need to follow to adapt accordingly to these new technologies:
- Google Voice always prioritizes websites that have quick load speed. This makes brands ensure their images are optimized, files well compressed, response times reduced, and the site fully responsive.
- Entire content should be compatible with long-tail keywords to reflect popular queries used in natural language.
- Include identifiable extracts that can be featured, making content more accessible for Google to place in feature snippets and summaries.
- Markups and structured data can assist in giving info about a brand and driving traffic to it. It also helps pages to appear on rich snippets, which increases the chances of being the first result of voice searches.
- Increasing domain authority also helps with rankings. Do so by including quality links provided by a backlink strategy. Agencies like Kala can provide experts to help plan a good strategy to succeed.
Furthermore, frequently asked questions can feature your information in snippets, attracting new traffic.
Create a FAQ Section
A great way to adapt a website to voice search is by implementing a FAQ section, which can help with typing searches. When people search, they typically pose questions requiring a concise answer. A FAQ page drives leads to your site and provides the correct answer.
Such a section can also help create common answers to questions surrounding your products, industries, and companies. Providing the knowledge for them to know more about your brand, service, and products helps everyone save time.
Furthermore, frequently asked questions can get your information featured in snippets, which is beneficial to attract new traffic.
Conclusion
There are many reasons to employ new technologies in search engine optimization methods, especially if they can bring new audiences into a business. To achieve this, it is essential to adapt, change and modernize every aspect of marketing and how they’re employed.
Knowing how voice search is changing SEO also brings many new issues that must be addressed to succeed. An agency like Kala is competent to help you through this process, thanks to its experts, to deliver the best voice search experience for your audience. Contact us today!
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