How Voice Search Optimization Changing Business Strategies

What is Voice Search

Voice search is somewhat of a new phenomenon, allowing users to use their voice when giving commands. While voice recognition may not have been used for Internet searches until a few years back, it has been in use for quite a while now. If you have ever worked with a program that has the speech-to-text feature or the voice dialing feature, you have already used the voice search technology. Even programs like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, and Cortana use the voice search technology in order to carry out orders

The technology of voice search helps user’s experience to smoothen when they use search engines because it gives faster and more precise results. You should optimize your website content in a manner which allows digital personal assistants to detect your presence. Make sure that your website is associated with relevant data, reliable web pages, and highly optimized content.

Lets see some key statistics of voice search

• Nearly 30% of all searches will be done without using a screen by the year 2020. This means it’s probably safe to say that 30% of people will be talking to computers!
• Around 21.4 million smart speakers taking orders from humans everywhere by 2020.
• At the present time, one in every six Americans currently own a voice-activated smart speaker. That works out to be around 16%.
• One in every four of those shoppers used a voice assistant in 2017, when shoppers were eager to find the perfect gift for the holidays.
• It’s very important to optimize your website content for local keywords if you want your website to be in top result for voice search because mobile voice-related searches are 3 times more likely to be local than text-related.
• About two in five adults use voice search at least once a day.
• The Echo Dot was the best-selling Amazon product, during the holiday season of 2018, among lots of voice assistants.
• 22% of smart speaker owners have purchased a product using their voice assistant device like Alexa, order me a pizza!
• Individuals that age from 26 to 35 represent the highest percentage of smart device users.
• 66% of voice search users use a smartphone, a quicker way to search!
• 60% of voice searchers think that talking is faster than typing so they prefer voice search to typing out a search query. 

How to optimize for voice search in 8 steps

Improve PageSpeed
People expect quick results for their searches. A vast majority of voice searches happen over mobile and devices such as Amazon Echo. And page loading speed is a crucial mobile search ranking signal. It was found out that the average Time to First Byte (TTFB) of a voice search result was .54 seconds. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) are also greatly favored in search results. So, if you want to improve your chance of showing up in a voice search, then make sure that your page loads faster.

SSL and HTTPS Certificate
An SSL certificate and HTTPS prefix validate your website security. In 2014, Google had announced that HTTPS would be considered as a priority ranking factor. This is applicable in voice searches as well. In fact, according to Backlinko, 70.4% of Google Home result pages are secured with an HTTPS prefix. This denotes that securing your website with HTTPS is an eye-catcher for search engines like Google.

Simple, Easy-to-read and Long-form Contents
Contents that are simple, easy-to-read and fall within the 2000-3000 word limit stand a high chance to rank in voice searches. However, stuffing your content with meaningless words to show up in searches is not the ideal method. Google chooses content quality over quantity. If your content meets the guidelines of quality material, then Google would consider it as the best pick.

Content engagement also plays a key role in voice search. Although Google doesn’t consider social media signals as a ranking factor, it has been observed that highly engaging contents tend to rank better for voice searches.

Featured Snippets & High SERP Ranking
Domain rating wins over page authority. Hence, priority will be given to a website with more quality backlinks than a webpage with a good backlink ratio. A website with a high domain rating ranks better in the search results. Quality link building itself forms a valuable off-page SEO tactic to boost page ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Another notable factor is a featured snippet section. These snippets are considered as the ideal results for voice searches. 40.7 % of voice searches are answered from these snippets. A featured snippet has the precise answer to the user’s question given in a concise format. Prior to all, you need to ensure that your webpage gets to the top of search results. Only pages in the first 10 results have a chance of being shown in the featured snippet section.

Mobile Optimization
As per Gartner, about 30% of the searches will be done without a screen by 2020. And about 1 in 5 adults use mobile voice search at least once monthly. A better mobile experience has become a crucial factor in voice search optimization. Furthermore, Google has taken mobile optimization seriously for search engine ranking. Google has special tools to conduct mobile-friendly tests for your web pages. So, the effort is going to be more than just a simple, mobile-optimized version of your existing website.