What You Need to Know About SEO and Voice Search

• Updated on: 2017-08-20
• Read original article here

If you’ve ever “fat fingered” while trying to type a search query on a smartphone keyboard, you’re not alone in your frustration. The rise of voice search and “voice assistants” such as Siri, OK Google, Cortana, and Amazon Echo’s Alexa have provided relief from the sometimes imperfect act of typing on a mobile keyboard. In fact, 58% of voice command users like the technologysimply because they don’t have to type, while 70.6% of them can also agree that these features are great because they are fast.

While an internet search would typically require someone to type their query into the search bar from their computer or mobile keyboard, voice assistants integrated into devices now allow users to speak their search terms instead. Performing a “voice search” is only one of many tasks a personal voice assistant can help you with. Voice recognition software built into mobile phones, computers, and IoT home devices can make it easier for users to make a call, make an order, or make a note on their devices hands-free.

While these are all interesting (and valuable) capabilities of voice assistants, the rise of voice search is the feature catching marketers’ eyes these days. The technology is beginning to shift how people interact with their search terms, and therefore the web pages and information they find.

If you’re a smartphone user, chances are you’ve used a voice assistant; even if it was on accident. Once again, you’re not alone. In 201565% of U.S. smartphone userstook advantage of their mobile voice assistants, up from 56% in 2014 and 30% in 2013.

Of these smartphone owners, 57.8% use voice search to look something up online. While voice search is still only the third most popular method for internet searches, behind opening up a mobile browser (85.6%) and using a search engine app (74.2%), it’s still worthy of consideration.

Currently, about 20% of searches on the Google mobile app and Android phones are voice search, and ComScore predicts that by 2020 50% of searches will be voice searches. Even though voice search isn’t the most popular search method just yet, online search is the second most common use for voice commands with just over 60% of users stating they use the function. The current top spot for the favorite way to use mobile voice assistants is making a phone call.

Voice assistants may seem like a novel technology but in fact, they’re making an impact on how people search and find information about companies. Some of these changes in search behavior include:

People speak a lot faster than they write, and using a voice assistant produces much more natural search terms than before. For example, typed search phrases may be shorter, more fragmented, and lack “filler” words. With a voice assistant, it’s not uncommon for users to search in full, natural sentences. An example of a natural language search query is “Who do I call if there’s something strange in my neighborhood?” instead of the typed phrase “strange problem neighborhood”. The answer is obviously Ghostbusters, but the “natural language” term is much closer to what you would hear in a normal conversation.

Another aspect of natural language are the five “W's” one “H”: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. We use search queries to learn and answer our questions, so it’s only natural thesequestion wordsappear more in searches as the popularity of voice search climbs.

Because we speak faster than we type, and natural un-robotic language tends to be longer, search queries are getting longeras well.

Websites that are giving customers what they want, i.e. longer keyword queries, are experiencinghigher click through rates.

Search queries that are more location specific

Along with natural language, search queries are becoming morelocation specific. Phrases such as “what are the best coffee shops near me” help mobile users find and navigate to location-specific businesses while they’re on the go.

It’s great to be aware of behavioral changes that are impacting digital marketing, but it’s best to know how to adapt your strategy to them. Here are changes that can be made to optimize a website and business’ SEO strategy for voice search:

Provide content as questions and answers to optimize for the answer box

As more searches use natural language and question words, your content should capture those queries and provide easy-to-access answers. A comprehensive FAQ page will help customers easily find what they’re looking for, and may help get your page into theanswer box. This is a result that appears above all organic search results and directly answers the search query. Want an in-house way to harness the power of Q&A? Talk to your customer service team about the questions they get most often.

Voice searches are naturally more conversational, so adopting a similar tone will connect to the queries.

Add structured data to help Google understand the page

Customers want to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, and rich snippets and cards from sites help them do just that. Implementing data, such asschema markup, to a web page helps Googleunderstand the contenteven more.

Besides just being a good practice for user experience, optimizing your site for mobile devices is important for voice search results since most of the queries will be made from a mobile phone.

Only time will tell how popular voice search becomes, but its growing adoption rates suggest the trend is here to stay for a while. There’s no reason to abandon all current SEO strategies for the shiny new toy that is voice search, but it is important to recognize and begin to adapt to this change.

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