Why voice search optimization is important?

Google introduced the voice search feature in 2011, which was primarily used as a novelty feature by its users at the time. Over the years, with improvements in speech recognition technology, voice search got thrust to the forefront of search marketing strategy across businesses. So much so, that the current statistics indicate around 41% of adults use voice search at least once daily!

With the way we use the internet getting transformed with such innovations, it becomes imperative for your business’s SEO growth to harness the popularity of voice search— and make a note of the upcoming trends in its statistics. 

What exactly is Voice Search Optimization?

Voice Search Optimization can be understood as the upgrading and streamlining of the information on your page in such a way that the questions for people’s verbal searches are answered accurately. 

Now. The answer to why voice search is on the rise can be found in our daily habits in the increasingly digitizing world—

As people became more accustomed to interacting with voice-activated/responsive devices, and smart speaker sales continued to rise, the use of voice search also increased. And if we know anything about the supply and demand logic, it’s clear that voice search is poised to get better with time. 

So, with improvements in technology, the connected devices will keep adding and enhancing voice-enabled functions. Digital Marketing pros can wield this to their advantage and study the latest voice search statistics and identify new trends that reveal the changing search habits of their customers moving forward.

Emerging Trends

• Voice AI and Machine Learning are Improving

AI and Machine Learning advancements like Google’s RankBrain have transformed our interaction with technology. To elucidate RankBrain’s example, the algorithm is designed to recognize words and phrases in order to learn and better predict outcomes and makes “guesses” to decode the searcher’s meaning and intent, which then lead to delivering appropriate matching answers.

• Voice search devices are mobile

The adoption of voice search can’t just be credited to smart speakers. If you own a smartphone, then you know just why. Voice search has become more mobile than ever. And why not, when you have something like Google’s voice search on mobile devices, made available in over 100 languages? 

• Local searches increasing with Voice

Trends have shown voice search users are increasingly relying on technology for local results. Data shows that within the past year, 58% of consumers have found local businesses using voice search. But the interesting part is that the rise isn’t just in the number of users, but the volume of voice searches as well, with 46% of users repeatedly using voice search, on a daily basis, to find a local business. 

• Impact on SEO

There’s a global movement underway by tech giants to perfect their voice technology, which means businesses will have to put in the work and get their SEO enhanced for voice search. To put things in context, the widely known voice recognition from Google has an accuracy rate of 95%, while China’s iFlytek’s speech recognition boasts a  98% accuracy rate. 

That’s as good as it gets you’d think, but wait till you hear about their claim of getting a 99% accuracy rate in the next three years. And that’s for translating from English to Mandarin and back— with dialects!

These exciting developments mean that any organization seeking to attract more inbound traffic to their website must factor in Voice SEO from now on when drawing their SEO strategy. 

Here are some tips to help you get going:

• Using conversational language with direct answers to specific questions helps match the user’s intent. Adding to this are question keywords and long tail keywords.  
• Develop customer persona and make detailed and informative content accordingly
• Make sure that your website’s loading speed is  fast
• Make sure that your website is mobile friendly
• Optimize local SEO to rank for “Near Me” voice queries
• Working on rich snippets and schema markup that help place queries and answers in a context that is better understood by search engines.
• Make sure that your content is optimized and up-to-date by removing outdated contact information, duplicate pages, etc. 
• Host an FAQ section that would provide quick short descriptions of the answers to their questions

As you can gauge, the veracity of voice search optimization is no longer in question. 

It’s about stepping up, educating yourself about the benefits of Voice search optimization, and applying these tips to your business’s website. Better yet, you can save yourself the hassle of technicalities and engage in the professional services of a digital marketing agency like us, the Matrix Bricks.