What happens when people stop writing in search engines and start speaking their queries? If you’re not sure, it’s time to find out because it’s happening already.
Voice search is changing the digital landscape and how consumers find businesses. If you’re striving to future-proof your brand’s digital marketing strategy,
It’s essential to account for the disruption voice search has caused and will likely continue to cause in the future of SEO.
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How Voice Search Has Changed SEO
Most modern smartphones include accessibility options such as speech to text. Now that technology has led to voice search. Anyone invested in a strong SEO strategy should leverage this new technology and prepare their targeted keywords and search phrases to consider these changes.
When users perform a voice search
They speak into a microphone and a speech recognition application analyses the user’s voice and converts it to text in an input field.
With Google’s virtual omnipresence on modern smartphones and internet-capable devices,
It’s now possible to perform a voice search directly into Google with almost any smartphone. While this affords a great deal of convenience to all different kinds of users, voice search presents a new layer of challenges for digital marketers.
SEO teams face an extraordinary level of challenge when it comes to capitalizing on voice search. Google offers a wide range of translation tools, but dialects and accents can vary within relatively short distances and complicate localized SEO.
Beyond accounting for more conversational and potentially colloquial searches,
Marketers now must account for the fact that users expect different results when they perform voice searches. They’re not interested in a list of links; they want direct answers in a conversational pattern.
Also Read: Voice Commerce- Conforming the new face of eCommerce with Voice Recognition
Developing Your New SEO Strategy for Voice Search
Voice search will not entirely replace text-based search; you still need to continue best practices for your standard search traffic rankings and adjust accordingly whenever Google adjusts the search algorithm.
However, voice search should comprise a portion of your SEO strategy going forward – or you should plan for it.
While most users still rely on voice search for quick, direct, and accurate answers to specific questions, users can still engage in strings of questions that ultimately cultivate trust if it leads to a positive interaction.
This is an opportunity to humanize your brand and start trust-based relationships with potential customers.
The direct answer search market is a vast untapped resource for driving organic traffic to your brand. When you provide a searcher or potential customer with a conversational but accurate response to a specific question, you inherently cultivate trust.
It’s also vital to account for the different types of voice search queries users perform. In general, voice search users perform three types of voice queries:
The user wants to use the voice search tool to go to a specific website or application. A few examples of navigational voice searches may include “open Safari,” “go to the App Store,” or “PayPal website.”
These simple voice commands navigate the user toward the desired service and rely heavily on accurate speech to text translation software.
2) Transactional
Users perform transactional voice searches to complete purchases online. Some examples could include “reserve movie tickets for tonight” or “order new towels from Amazon.”
Many app developers are looking for ways to integrate voice command technology into their platforms for greater ease of use and convenience.
3) Informational
The most common voice searches are direct questions with specific answers. “How many meters are in one mile,” “how old is the President,” or “how do I change a tire” are a few examples of questions with direct answers and little room for interpretation.
Your marketing and content development teams likely geared the content published on your website and social media pages toward capturing search engine traffic from text-based searches.
With voice command growing more popular year after year. It’s essential to start accounting for these three types of voice searches in your SEO strategies.
