logo
In the earliest days of search engines, people logged onto their desktop computers and pecked out their search terms on the keyboard. While many of us still do that, more and more searches today are taking place on mobile devices or home assistants via that most natural of human interfaces: voice. The rise in popularity of virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, or Google Home mean that content marketers need to adapt to SEO for voice search.
In 2013, Google’s Hummingbird update began to take language and semantics into account for the purpose of search optimization. It tracked conversational phrases and began divining searcher intent by parsing the language being used. A few marketers on the cutting edge began to try and build business channels based on voice search. Domino’s was one of the first companies to allow users of Amazon’s Alexa to order pizza through the home device using voice request.
Admittedly, speech hasn’t taken over search yet.
Google has stated that this year, about 20 of mobile search queries are done using voice. This number will continue to escalate, however, and companies that rely on SEO for marketing (which is pretty much all of them) need to adapt, according to Marketing Week’s Sarah Vizard.
“Instead of consumers seeing a long list of results and being able to pick the most suitable one, most voice results will probably serve up just one answer,” she wrote. “The types of search queries are different too. When typing, people generally input queries such as ‘weather’ but in voice they might ask, ‘Do I need an umbrella today?’. That offers more context and therefore more chance for brands to show up relevant content, but that requires a change of approach.”
While keywords aren’t going away anytime soon, they may become longer thanks to voice search.
Rather than typing “Frigidaire Dishwasher Model 367 User Guide” into a search engine, someone might instead ask, “What’s the best way to clean soap scum off the inside of my Frigidaire dishwasher?” While the intent is the same, the method used to get results is very different.
Beyond home-based virtual assistants, more people today are using “chat bots,” or automated chat channels that also work via natural language rather than manual entry of short keywords.
Gartner has predicted that 30 percent of Web browsing sessions will be done without a screen by 2020. Beyond that, the research company has also predicted that voice will help expand digital commerce itself.
Ensure your company is ready to be “found” by voice and natural language.
At Keyword Performance we help marketers optimize their search strategies to prepare for higher rates of voice search so they’re not left behind when voice search becomes a larger part of the search industry.
