Voice search technology is becoming increasingly popular—more than 50% of US consumers use speech search for online grocery shopping, while 25% of the global population uses this solution to browse the Internet. However, voice search queries work differently than text—organizations must optimize their web content to rank for these speech searches.
This article will explore how voice search works, how it impacts a website’s SEO, and the strategies businesses can leverage to benefit from this speech technology.
What Is Voice Search?
Voice search is the method of performing an Internet search through speech—using AI, devices such as laptops and smartphones can match the user’s speech search with the most relevant results.
These devices use dialogue systems, which support different forms of communication, including text, speech, and gestures as input and output signals to enable human interaction with their interfaces. Spoken dialogue systems leverage Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for input voice queries and text-to-speech (TTS) as the output results.
Acting as a medium between humans using speech to search the Internet and AI systems processing these queries are voice search assistants. For instance, when using Google to perform a voice search, Internet users can open this app on any device, click on the microphone beside the search bar and make a voice query. In turn, Google’s assistant will use ASR to detect the search intent and TTS to find the top results.
Moreover, 50% of people in the US use voice search, with 50% of this group relying on this technology daily. A report by MarketsandMarkets confirms that in 2022, the voice search market was over $9 billion. By 2027, speech search technology will reach $28.1 billion, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.4%.
How Does Voice Search Impact SEO?
Voice search has a different impact on SEO than traditional search engine results pages (SERPs)—when users conduct a voice search, they use much more conversational terms than text queries. For instance, a user will speak to the voice assistant in phrases such as “Where is the best place to buy fresh fruit?” as opposed to “Places to buy fresh fruit” or “Fresh fruit near me”.
Consequently, organizations must optimize their content to be conversational, target long tail keywords, and answer direct questions, enabling search engines to match voice search queries to their content. However, businesses must consider various strategies to optimize their websites for voice search, which we will explore next.
The Top Voice Search Strategies for Websites
For a successful voice search campaign, organizations must adjust their keyword research, ensure readers can skim their web copy, optimize their local SEO, use structured data, create an FAQ page, and improve their domain authority. Here is a detailed overview of how businesses can implement these solutions.
Adjust Keyword Research
As briefly discussed above, organizations must take a different approach to the keywords they target for voice search. Keywords are imperative to the success of voice SEO because of how conversational these search queries are. Here are some key considerations for keyword research:
- Long-tail keywords. These should be questions to match how users conduct voice searches.
- Question keywords. Voice search queries are often questions, so businesses should target long-tail keywords that include words such as why, where, how, when, and what.
- Filler words. These are words that make the search query more conversational and include “the”, “and”, “more”, “on the” and “why the”.
SEO tools, such as SEMrush, offer dedicated voice search optimization services to automate keyword research.
Ensure Web Content Is Scannable
Similar to using conversational language for website content, organizations must ensure their content is easy to skim. This means using simple sentences and subheadings, bolding or italicizing valuable information, and avoiding excessive popups or any material that may distract the reader and search engines from understanding the content’s relevance.
In addition, Google’s algorithm prioritizes content based on search intent relevance (among other ranking factors) over keywords. As such, leveraging scannable content makes it much easier for search engines to detect the context of the copy and match it to the target audience’s queries.
Optimize Local SEO
Local SEO has rapidly become crucial for companies to reach potential buyers in their local area. A survey by BrightLocal confirms that after 2022, 98% of consumers rely on the Internet to source local businesses. Additionally, a study conducted by Score Foundation found that 76% of users between 18 and 34 use voice technology to find companies in their location, followed by 64% of people aged 35 to 54.
Evidently, organizations must optimize their local SEO for a successful voice search campaign. They can achieve this through the following techniques.
- Optimize content for phrases and terms that local audiences may use to describe the business.
- Claim their Google Business Profiles and ensure all the information is updated and accurate (e.g., no spelling errors).
- Create informative, valuable blog content targeted at consumers in their local area.
- Include “near me” in meta descriptions, title tags, anchor texts, and internal links.
Use Schema Markup
Besides its official ranking factors, there are many more elements Google considers when crawling website content—schema markup or structured data is one such element. Although this form of metadata does not directly influence a website’s ranking, it does help Google analyze the data on a website (such as the site code), making it easier to classify and organize content.
As speech search involves detailed questions, businesses must optimize structured data, so Google can analyze every piece of information about their content and match them to relevant search queries. For instance, if a user searches, “Who developed the first voice search assistant”, a featured snippet will appear, informing the user that MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum created the first voice search assistant in the 1960s.
However, while there may be more information on that web page about voice search assistants and how they were first developed, Google can extract the exact answer by understanding the site’s metadata. Fortunately, organizations can use Google’s Structured Data Helper to determine how to optimize their schema markup.
Develop an FAQ Page
Remember, the premise of voice search is providing clear, direct answers to detailed, conversational questions. An FAQ page is excellent to optimize speech search SEO as it combines the top questions frequently asked by a company’s target audience and concise, valuable answers.
Creating this page enables organizations to focus on optimizing for long-tail keywords while allowing Google to analyze and extract as much information about their websites as possible. And as demonstrated previously, the more details search engines can gather about a website, the higher chances of ranking for the most relevant search queries.
Improve Domain Authority
Speech technology only considers the top search results for voice search queries—businesses must ensure their website content ranks on Google’s first page to drive organic traffic.
Consequently, organizations must take on the highly technical endeavor of improving their sites’ domain authority to secure higher Google rankings in the SERP, which they can achieve through the following strategies:
- Acquire high-quality backlinks from third-party websites with high domain authority.
- Focus on optimizing the quality and value of content.
- Consistently perform website audits and remove broken links.
- Optimize page speed as Google prioritizes low web page loading times.
- Ensure their website is mobile-friendly because most spoken searches are from these devices.
- Rely on tools, such as Moz and SEMrush, to analyze and stay ahead of domain authority and website performance.
In Closing
By implementing these six strategies, businesses can ensure their websites are optimized for speech technology. Organizations should adjust their keyword research to target long-tail terms, develop scannable content, optimize for local SEO and schema markup, create an FAQ page, and improve their domain authority. As a result, these strategies will ensure they are discoverable on the Internet regardless of how users choose to search.
