Your company may lose sales if you don’t optimize your website for voice search. It’s impossible to deny the growing importance of voice search on the web. More and more people are using smartphones, smart speakers, automobiles, televisions, household appliances, wearables, and other forms of internet-connected technology. To put it simply, they offer the kind of ease that today’s shoppers covet. Instantaneous responses can be obtained with the use of a single button press and a recited phrase. Thanks to advancements in speech recognition technology, everyday tasks like grocery shopping are now much less of a hassle. The advantages of virtual assistants are becoming more and more apparent, and more people are beginning to use them.
Estimates related to voice search
Estimates suggest that by 2024, there will be 8.4 billion digital voice assistants in use worldwide. This sum exceeds the whole population of the entire planet. Even more impressive, smart speaker devices are now in the hands of roughly a third of American households. The history and nature of voice search should be understood before diving into optimization advice for this technology.
Voice search 101
Voice search takes away a step in the research process. This allows users to make better use of available technology. ASR or otherwise known as the automated speech recognition system enables voice searches to be conducted by converting audio into text. It’s now possible to conduct a search on a smart device merely by speaking a query into the device’s microphone. Then, the voice search function will use the translated speech to produce a written query. How cool is that? It makes some things much easier.
The text is then processed by the search engine as if it were a regular query, and relevant results are returned. Machine learning evolves to comprehend more idiomatic English and the searcher’s purpose, ultimately returning more relevant results. A personal voice assistant device’s audio quality, battery life, and responsiveness can all be improved. It can be done with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Continuous developments in NLP make it easier for systems to comprehend the user’s queries and input.
Optimizing for voice search
Your first step should be reducing page loading time. Among the most crucial aspects of search engine rankings is how quickly a page loads. This is something that every SEO expert will tell you. Also, the quicker your site load time is going to be a decisive ranking element in the future due to the rising volume of digital information (including audio) online.
A Backinko study found that websites with content broken down into short, consumable portions performed much better on the initial pages of search engine results from pages. The same investigation also discovered that Google rewarded websites with short loading speeds.
Long-tail SEO
While using long-tail keywords isn’t as common as it once was, it is a great method to make your site compatible with voice searches. As a matter of fact, there are two primary causes for its remarkable efficiency. One difference is that when using voice commands, the amount of text being searched is much more. The second is that these intelligent helpers are here to give us answers to all of our questions. So, long-tail SEO is a useful tool for achieving featured snippets. Therefore, it will always take you to the first page of results when you conduct a search.
Targeted questions
The most common form of voice search is a query. Consider the questions people ask virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Now. As you well know, all of them are queries. What is the best way to give your dog a bath? These are very good concerns. People research those kinds of questions. It’s crucial to have material that corresponds to the behavior of your target audience at all times.
Voice-search friendly content
Always double-check that your content is conversational and simple to read. Make sure there’s something written at the 9th-grade level (or higher) for an automated voice to read correctly.
You need more local content
Many people use voice searches to find local information. The SEO for voice search and smart technology you can wear can be greatly improved by creating local content (relevant of course) that responds to the local demands of your people. However, a physical presence in the area is not crucial to provide locally relevant information. You may also offer a mountain of locally relevant material that will drive customers your way no matter where you are.
User experience
When conducting a voice search, you will be directed to a single result page as opposed to multiple in the traditional SERPs. Make sure the voice assistant has quick and easy access to all the data it needs. Because of this, it is essential that your website is accessible on mobile devices, loads quickly, and uses HTTP for security.
Regural SEO is still important
If you want to optimize your website for voice search, you should still create amazing content as you do in traditional SEO. This is why voice searches work better for websites that have high levels of social interaction, high ranks, and strong domain authority. The use of voice queries is rapidly becoming the next big thing in the search market. Companies who want to remain competitive in 2022 need to master both traditional SEO and voice search optimization. If you need any help with voice search or your regular SEO you can always call SEO experts. You don’t have to handle everything on your own. And if you invest some time and effort soon enough you will become an SEO expert yourself.