Why is Voice Search Bigger Than What You Think?

All this while, websites have been constantly optimising for Google’s SERPs which were same for all devices.

Suddenly, a shift in efforts came as the mobile users grew in number. Websites began optimising for mobile search to get into mobile first indexing of Google.

What’s next? The website will soon join the race for voice search optimisation. Google is testing voice search option and since Google has started it, likewise, all have going to follow it by default.

Voice Search Optimisation

Voice search is something that is going to be in demand in the future. Pretty painful, but everything is difficult before it becomes easy. Like you had been focusing on desktop rankings and mobile to rankings, now you have to also focus on voice searches.

According to a survey, in 2015,  voice searches became 50 billion of the total searches performed from 0. This is an exponential growth because people are addicted to the use of smartphones and can’t live without checking it at least 100 times a day.

27% people who are smartphone users are performing voice search daily and so, it is not a thing to pass over. By 2020, it is estimated that 50% searches will be made through voice. Do you see what people are going to ask for?

Okay Google!

Let us give you a better idea. Not just Google, but all major technology providers are investing in virtual assistants who while driving the world crazy with voice search results. This is going to make people adapt to voice searches in no time.

Be it Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Google assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s Bixby, or Yandex’s Alice, all are built in order to fulfill the future requirements of voice searches.

Ok Google

You might consider that the phenomenon of people turning to voice searches is still at dawn, but it is soon going to conquer the searches performed throughout the days and nights. You must be prepared for the progressive developments that are about to come in this virtual world soon.

Voice Search Is AI Based

This year is all about mobile, voice and AI. 2018 is centered around developments in these domains only. All aspects of voice search rely on voice recognition and natural language processing.

This implies that over the time, the voice assistants learn the patterns of speech which are unique to the person who speaks to them. It matures on providing tailored search results by creating preferences in terms of places, food, activities, and behavior.

The only drawback that voice searches have as it can be seen from the daily experiences is the noise grain that the input contains. It would directly impact the understanding capability fo the virtual assistant and the results it returns to the query.

In an experiment, out of 35% of normal recognition errors, 31% were noise related and 22% were pronunciation related. But companies are investing their time and money on speech recognition and this bug is soon to disappear from our world.

Voice Search Will Power Local SEO

Virtual assistants are going to form the basis for providing results as per user’s relevancy. In fact, these will power local SEO as people will perform searches for locally available places, shops, bus stands, taxi stands, etc. This can benefit a lot of businesses as competition in this niche is very low right now.

Voice search

While traveling or walking or commuting at any place, which is new to them, they will not like to type for anything in the future. Even deals, sales and promotions can be narrated through these voice assistants. You must be getting how you can drive people to nearby stores.

Fundamental Difference From Typed Search

Voice search is fundamentally very different from typed search. There are three features of voice search that can be attributed to this difference.

  1. Speed: Voice searches are faster than the typed searches as we can speak up to 150 words in a single minute but we can type only 40 words in a singleness minute.
  2. Convenience: Voice searches involve no use of hands, and add to the convenience of the user. We can perform Voice search while doing anything like driving, taking a pet for a walk, cooking, watching tv, etc.
  3. Reliability: voice search matures with the interaction a user does. This means that it is going to present tailored results as per users behavior and liking, making assistant a relative to the person.

And with this, the sites trying to derive traffic from typed search option are going to see a sharp decline in the organic traffic because the number of users performing the typed search will fall.

It would become tough to fetch traffic from typed searches even when the site is very well optimised for it. All things that virtual assistants can do such as making choices or answering questions, will never be typed and searched.

In a scenario when sites were adjusting to the world that has newly gone mobile, this is a lucrative and rich market. However, exploring it will be time-consuming.

Become Loved By Voice Assistants

If you have realized what you have to do by now, you must we wondering what you should do for voice search optimising. Well, the answer isn’t simple. You have to become those services or websites which are loved by virtual assistants.

And since you have decided to do this, you can’t expect others to sit idle. The competition will be clearly more tough as there will be a race for voice search rankings as well. The race for that one spot that will be returned by voice assistants to the user.

Google Assistant

Create Content That’s Speaks To The User

In order to face this technological evolution, you have to produce content which speaks soon to the user, in the language of the user. For your information, 87% users think that mobile search isn’t accurate. And they will adhere to voice search results too!

If your content is in a tone that is what people use in daily life, with common phrases and questions, your website will be picked up in returning answers to voice searches. Besides this, check out the other techniques for voice search optimisation that shall make your website more visible to voice search assistants in no time. They are as follows:

1 – The first thing to be kept in mind is having a mobile-friendly site because most of these searches will be performed through smartphones.

2 – The second important thing while creating content is to consider the situations when people are most likely to use voice search and optimising for queries related to them.

3 – The third significant thing is picking up long tail keywords that represent a call to action query of users such as I want to know, I want to do, I want to go, I I want to buy, I want to eat, etc.

4 – The fourth technique to rise in voice search is creating snippable content, which occupies position 0 in SERPs. The snippet can come from any site that ranks between 4 to 71 and will be read by voice search assistants automatically when matched with a query.

So, we have to admit that voice search is a great way for better visibility and consequently for the perks of reaching right people.

Voice Searches Will Be Used For Urgent Responses

Voice search will be mostly used by people when they have an urgency. They need tailored answers to the search query as and when one pops up in the user’s mind. It has to be quick and efficient, To make your potential customer find what is best for them.

You need to start it now. Voice search isn’t going to be popular than ever, in the next three years as all tech giants are making deep investments in the field across the world. You have to prepare your website for voice search as the tech companies have already seen the potential that the growing rise of voice search possesses.

Even you must move further in this direction by allowing your people to shop for hundreds of thousands of products by talking to their digital assistant.

 

Conclusion

When you type, you combine a lot of keywords to get what you would like to find out. However, in voice search, you input a query as if you were talking to a living creature.

70% voice queries received by Google Are naturally sounding questions and this isn’t what should be your approach for keywords.

Voice search will be driven by the intent to act rather than the purpose of simply searching. Call to action queries is what make 80% of all search queries.

It is not at all troublesome. Voice search will not kill typed Search because screens will always be thereby with the microphone.

Just like mobile did not kill the desktop, just taking away users from it, voice search too will not kill typed search but will deprive it of its users!

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Amit Mishra

Amit Mishra, the co-founder of Media Search Group, loves to pen down about marketing and designing. Be it search engine optimization(SEO) tips and strategies, Social Media Optimization, Increasing Engagement, and Traffic Score, Web Design and Development, Mobile Applications, Conversion/Sales, he covers it all. Been in the business for a long time, Amit Mishra knows some of the best strategies on how to expand and grow a Business Online.