Voice search is the latest in a long line of consumer technologies that are commanding attention from companies who may not fully understand how it impacts their business. What does it mean for a marketer to be “voice search-ready”? Is there an ROI justification for achieving it? answers, Norman Rohr, SVP of Marketing at Uberall.
The rise of voice search
To answer these questions, it’s important to understand voice search. The rise of AI-powered digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri,Google Assistant or Microsoft’s Cortana created a surge in the use of voice search, where a user asks a question or gives a command to a virtual assistant on a device like a smartphone or smart home speaker. The assistant recognizes the command or query, analyzes user intent and provides a response chosen from search engine results.
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Beyond the natural language aspect of voice searches – people tend to speak to devices in complete sentences rather than keywords – there are differences between voice search and traditional search. An online search will send a user to a search engine response page with a list of results. By contrast, when a consumer utters a command like, “OK Google/Hey Siri/ Alexa, find the best mechanic in my area,” the query will return only one result at a time. (This is the case if the result is spoken back to the consumer. However, even a mobile voice search will deliver only a limited list of results.)
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This is a major shift in how people receive search results. Per Statista, mobile search accounts for around 57% of the entire search market, up from half of all search in 2016. Only some — about 20% — of those searches are voice-based. However, given the growing popularity of digital assistants and the penetration of smart home devices and in-car digital assistants, it’s still indicative of voice search’s rise.
Since 2008 the average digital user is spending more than twice as long online and 10 times longer on mobile, the most popular voice search technology now. And smart speaker penetration is rapidly growing; NPR, in a studyreleased in January, found a 78% increase in smart speakers in U.S. homes year-over-year. This indicates people are getting used to voice-operated technology in their day-to-day lives.
So, while voice search is the latest marketing buzzword, it’s also a trend that is fundamentally reshaping how consumers find and engage businesses through digital media.
Being voice-search-ready
With that in mind, marketers need to prepare to be voice-search-ready. The challenge is that industry experts have been advocating voice search optimization for some time now, but without offering common standards or a method of analyzing voice-search-readiness for easy business adoption. And despite efforts to establish comprehensive voice-search ranking factors, there are no widely accepted parameters around voice-search readiness.
These benchmarks are important because businesses need to be able to assess if they are optimized for local voice search queries and be able to identify areas for improvement. Voice search readiness is, essentially, just a stricter, harder local SEO. However, optimizing for voice search will automatically optimize for local SEO.
With that in mind, I propose several best practices for establishing voice search readiness:
Step one always starts with Google
If you do not have an accurate and complete Google My Business listing for each of your locations, you are failing your voice search readiness score. It’s as simple as that.
Don’t ignore Bing and Yahoo
Google is important, but Bing and Yahoo power more voice search applications than you may realize. Having correct and consistent listings across the entire search ecosystem will improve the odds for hitting the number-one spot in voice search.
Keep your facts straight
Make sure your listings are consistent across all platforms and apps, including hours, location, phone number, name and website information. This includes listings you might not even be aware of, so take the time to conduct a thorough inventory of your digital presence.
Also Read: SEO 2020: Welcome to the New World of Voice Optimization
Use voice-friendly structured language
The language on your listings should be the content that voice searchers will use when searching for your business. In particular, consider questions people might ask when trying to find or learn more about your product or service.