Voice Search Optimization: The Why, What & How of Voice-based Search Today
Imagine you are lying in your bed feeling lazy, relaxed, and almost like The Lotos Eaters of Alfred Tennyson. OK, the analogy of lotus-eaters might be too romantic & dramatic here but the point is we all love comfort, don’t we?
Just tell me, if you have the option of Voice Search on your phone, would you still like to type something (a query) on it to search on Google or YouTube?
Of course, not. You would like to use the voice search feature or a smart speaker.
Voice Search is helpful when you are running a search query online on your computer or on a portable device such as a mobile phone. It is more convenient to run queries using our voice. I will define VS and share some statistics in a minute.
What is a Voice Search?
When you give a voice command to your computer or any digital device such as a mobile phone to run a search query, it is called Voice Search.
The current usage of voice search is fairly basic. However, the technology is rapidly growing in popularity because it is more convenient & user-friendly.
Top 4 Voice Search Services
- Google Search
- Cortina
- Siri
- Amazon Echo
10 Important Statistics of Voice Search
1: According to Mary Meeker’s report, voice search has grown by 35 % by 2016. To the best of my knowledge, it seems to be the most updated stats on voice search from a credible source. I could not find if Google has released the latest data on VS.
2: Last year, 58% of people used voice search to look for information on local businesses and 27% proceeded to visit the website of a local business. (Source: Brightlocal )
3: Voice search (as compared to text) is 3 times more likely to be a local search. It means the user is looking for something close by such as a beauty parlor, restaurant real estate agent or money exchange, etc. (SOURCE: SEARCH ENGINE WATCH)
4: On mobile devices, 20 % of all search queries are voice-based. (Source: GOOGLE )
5: Voice shopping will increase from $ 2 Billion to $40 Billion by 2022 (Source: OC&C Consultant.)
6: Here is an interesting one 🙂 Google has injected 2,865 romance novels into its AI system to improve its conversational search abilities. (Source: Buzzfeed NEWS)
7: 50 % OF ALL SEARCHES WILL BE VOICE SEARCHES by 2022 (Source: COMSCORE)
8: TechCrunch, quoting NPR & Edison Research Report(Jan-2018), says 1 out of 6 Americans has purchased a smart speaker which is a staggering increase of 128 % since Jan-2017.
9: Smart speakers recorded a whopping 25 million sales in 2017. (Source: Billboard)
10: Smart speakers sales is expected to be 36 million in 2018 (Source: Billboard)
Please do keep in mind such statistics mostly speak for the North American markets. Nevertheless, we can learn a lot from such statistics as tech trends are international in nature.
How to Optimize for Voice Search
Perhaps, you can start with smart guesswork here. Try to understand what the consumer’s intention is when using a Voice-based search.
The best approach is to observe yourself while consuming the internet or using personal portable devices. Become mindful of your own interaction with digital technologies, is a good start to optimizing for voice-based SEO.
People generally use fewer words to reduce their physical effort when they are typing. It explains why businesses are mostly trying to rank for a group of words like ‘Dubai PPC Agencies’, and ‘Dental Clinic Mirdif’ without a conjunction or a preposition. However, this approach might not work in voice-based optimization.
According to the SEO community, search tends to be more conversational in tone or based on a direct question during a voice search.
Hence, your usual keywords or long-tail keywords, intended for the normal search engine optimization, may not work well.
Further, the long-tailed keywords might not be effective because people tend to ask questions during voice searches. For example:
“What is the nearest fitness club?”, “What’s on the menu for dinner in xyz restaurant”.
Voice Search Makes Local SEO More Important
As it is clear from the above statistics, Voice Search has great implications for local search as people do a voice-based search for their favorite restaurants, theme parks, and movie theaters.
Tech giants like Google are rapidly improving their algorithm/AI functions to facilitate the user by returning better results against each query. they call their system, the Duplex.
As always, the companies who own the voice search services have the ultimate say on Voice Search.
To be continued, edited, and updated…Keep in touch with Unfreezemarketing. I wrote this a while ago, an update is due. Would you like to suggest anything?
