Voice SEO is the optimization of keywords and keyword phrases for searches using voice assistants.
According to some SEO experts, voice SEO is required for websites to effectively show up in results for searches conducted through voice assistants. In 2018, voice searches made up 20% of Google search queries, 25% of Bing searches and 10% of Baidu queries. The potential importance of voice SEO will rise with the increased use of voice searching, which is likely as more people use mobile devices for web searches and other computing purposes.
Some of the most common voice searches are for navigation. Local businesses can benefit by registering on a listing service such as Google My Business, a free tool for businesses to manage their presence on Google Search and Maps. Another important consideration is the inclusion of more conversational terms and phrases since searches through a voice assistant tend to mimic real-life conversations. This approach is called long-tail+, where the plus is for conversational phrases that are added to enhance SEO for voice. Microdata, which embeds metadata in the existing HTML of a webpage, also helps optimize websites for voice SEO as it allows web crawlers, browsers and search engines to better understand the contents of a webpage.
Critics argue that voice SEO is irrelevant because voice searches are turned into text-based searches before they’re submitted, which makes them no different than desktop or mobile searches. Advocates counter that although voice searches do search the same way as mobile or desktop and often have the same results, the nuances of voice search can help both search engines and marketers better understand and serve consumers than traditional text searching.
Why optimize for voice search?
Voice search isn’t a craze — it’s slowly becoming the norm. About 40% of U.S. internet users use a voice assistant at least monthly, primarily through smartphones and smart speakers. The number of smart speakers in the U.S. alone is expected to surpass 200 million by 2023.
Voice search presents another critical opportunity to capture organic search traffic, no matter what industry you’re in. By tapping into voice search, you’ll access a new cohort of users who rely on smartphones and smart speakers to find businesses and purchase products.
Targeting voice search can also help your site’s overall SEO and ranking. Search engines like when websites optimize for voice searches, which can give your site more authority and thus higher spots on results pages, maybe even high enough to land in a voice search result.
How is voice search different from text search?
If you’re any kind of web professional, be it a marketer, website owner, or SEO specialist, you’re probably familiar with general SEO techniques for ranking higher in search results, and you might wonder why voice search needs its own category of optimization.
While there is overlap between on-page search optimization and voice search optimization, there are also fundamental qualities of voice search that make it unique from a text search on a website like Google.com.
Namely, voice search queries are more conversational than text searches. They’re closer to how we talk in real life. In a voice search, you may ask “What are some good spas near me?” In a text search, queries are phrased more along the lines of “spa near me.”
As voice search became more prominent, search engines improved at picking out the meanings of longer, more conversational queries and producing relevant results. Google’s Hummingbird and BERT algorithm updates shifted focus toward searcher intent, detecting the underlying meaning of queries (instead of just individual keywords in a query) and providing more relevant results to more conversational voice queries.
Now, the work falls on you to make content that’s deemed relevant to voice search users. Fortunately, you don’t need to overhaul your existing SEO strategy to capture voice search traffic. In the next section, we’ll cover some techniques to help you.
For more details on our products and services, please feel free to visit us at: Internet Marketing Services, Content Marketing Services, Reputation Management, Search Engine Optimization & Social Media Optimization.
Please feel free to visit us at: https://webigg.com/