Back in 2011, Apple introduced its groundbreaking technology with the launch of the iPhone4- voice assistant Siri. Siri revolutionized the way people do many tasks on their devices, including calling, messaging, navigating, and searching. After a few years, Amazon came into the voice tech race with a blast. Amazon’s Echo was the first smart home voice assistant. Slowly and steadily, people started to adopt and adore voice search for most of their online tasks. Stats show an increasing trend of using voice search in recent years. If you want to thrive as an online business, you should optimize your content for voice search.
In this article, I have covered the whys and hows of content optimization for voice search. But first, let’s have an understanding of voice technology – what it is and how it works.
What’s Voice Search Technology?
As the name suggests, voice search is searching over the web through voice commands. It is AI-powered technology using Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Here are the main functions of voice search:
- Speech to text translation.
- Text analytics and transfer to search engines.
- Information extraction and communication to humans in the form of voice.
The above-mentioned tasks are carried out through complex deep learning algorithms. It is AI at its finest at work. The sophisticated algorithms help in voice-to-text and text-to-voice translations, text, and data analytics, and decision making.
Why Should You Care About Voice Search Content Optimization?
This is the year 2021 – Voice search optimization is crucial in the era of smart voice assistants. People have widely adopted Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Google Assistant with open arms. It is estimated that over 66 million users in America use a smart assistant. The debates whether the voice tech is here to stay or not clearly end up in favor of voice tech.
The ease to search and do online tasks such as online shopping, making an appointment, booking hotels through voice commands has been appreciated by the majority of users. Then
In addition to smartphones or devices, over 66 million Americans own a smart speaker. Some popular smart speakers are Amazon Alexas and Google’s Smart Speakers. With the increasing use of these devices, the chances to access your website through voice search are increasing day by day. Stats show an increasing trend of using voice technology in recent years. It is estimated that the global voice recognition market size was forecast to grow from 10.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 to 27.16 billion U.S. dollars by 2025. The estimated CAGR from 2020 to 2025 amounts to 16.8 percent! Therefore, If you are wishing to build an online brand, make sure you choose voice search optimized ecommerce web solutions and services.
Top Five Ways to Optimize Your Content for Voice Search
I have compiled a list of the top five voice search optimization hacks. I am sure that by following these SEO strategies, you will break the voice search content optimization code. Let’s dig in:
Conversational Language for Voice Search
It is obvious – voice search is a conversational search. The voice queries are usually in the form of questions or orders. These are well-defined queries as compared to the queries we write on the Google search page. Here are a few examples of voice search queries:
- Where can I find a great deal for Play Station 5?
- Show me the latest travel by air options to Toronto.
- Show me the list of top ecommerce development companies near Canada?
When you are developing content for your website, make sure that you are writing conversational answers to such questions. Here are some tips to do so: What question keywords are people using relevant to your business? What is the conversational style of the target audience? What answers are performing well against these questions and displayed as voice search results?
Make sure that you write SEO-optimized, conversational content. Write as if you are talking with the audience. Moreover, make the conversation as natural and easy to understand as possible.
Voice Search is Powered by Long-Tail Keywords
I have discussed this earlier in the article as well. As the voice search goes with the conversation, focus on long keywords for SEO. These keywords are mostly parts of the questions (examples mentioned above). It is the responsibility of SEO experts to find the long-tail keywords associated with your content. Ideally, these keywords should be part of the queries asked by the maximum number of users.
Generally, writers dislike long-tail keywords. However, if you make your content conversational, it becomes easier to include long-tail keywords.
Improve Loading Time of Your Website
Yes, this is important. Loading time impacts voice search. Faster loading times mean that you have more chances to be on top of voice search lists. For more information, you can check Google’s Speed Update:
“Users want to find answers to their questions quickly and data shows that people really care about how quickly their pages load. The Search team announced speed would be a ranking signal for desktop searches in 2010 and as of this month (July 2018), page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches too.”
Focus on Mobile Search
This is the era of mobile phones. Despite a massive increase of smart voice assistants, mobile phones are still the most common medium of using voice search. ‘Hey, Siri’ rings the bell, right? Here are a few best practices that can help in optimizing content for mobile voice search:
- As discussed above, make sure to build a fast mobile-responsive website.
- Take care of mobile-friendliness from design till development and deployment.
- Run tests for mobile usability and optimization regularly.
Google’s My Business Listings
Here’s the deal – your website should be on google’s my business listings. Google My Business listing helps Google know the details of your business, such as location and timings. When someone asks questions like: Find good coffee shops near me, google automatically suggests the businesses about which it knows the details. So make sure that you are on google’s business listings.When someone asks Google to display similar businesses in that area, your business could rank for that query.
Wrapping Up
“The vision for Echo and Alexa was inspired by the Star Trek computer,” ― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos
The concept of voice search was once fiction, but thanks to AI and innovation, it has become a groundbreaking reality, affecting online businesses. In this article, I have listed five hacks to optimize your content for voice search. I hope that this article will help your business to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution powered by smart technologies.