At this point in time, practically everyone knows who Alexa and Siri are. Technology has evolved so much that it has made its way into our day-to-day living. Virtual assistants and smart speakers have really brought voice search SEO to new heights.
Voice Search
Keywords that sounded rather robotic used to be quite popular, but lately, there’s been a rise in voice search trends of keywords that sound more natural. This is likely why many businesses have decided to make the most of the technology today. According to statistics, mobile voice search is utilized by nearly 30% (specifically, 27%) of the global online population.
“Alexa!”
Contrary to popular belief, the Amazon Echo only makes use of the search engine Bing for complementary purposes. This includes producing search links in the mobile app. Sometimes, people ask Alexa questions that there are no ready responses to. To address this, Amazon launched Alexa Answers: other users can answer questions to help others out.
As a result, Alexa’s answers are generally taken from Alexa Answers. Every single time, there’s a note that it’s “according to an Amazon customer.” There’s a very big chance that the information Alexa uses to make informed answers are influenced by search engine rankings.
“Hey Siri!”, “OK Google!”
Siri is the built-in voice search software of Apple, mostly utilized by users of their iPhones. On the other hand, Android users just call on Google. Their answers to questions come from Google’s featured snippet; back in 2020, there was a major shift related to this.
What used to happen was that brands who appeared on featured snippets would also be seen in organic search results. That meant a double feature on the first page of SERPs (search engine pages results). Since last year, they shifted so that a featured snippet would no longer be part of the organic results.
Voice Search and Website SEO
According to Google, around 70% of Google Assistant searches make use of “natural language”: words that are conversational.
This is best defined by a situational example. A user that’s doing a text-based search will likely type “authentic Italian lasagna recipe”; if they use a voice assistant, their language will be more natural. “OK Google, how do I make Italian lasagna that’s authentic?”
Local inquiries have also been surging in terms of searches. These usually involve terms such as “coffee shops near me” or “auto repair shop near me.” There are many consumers who use voice search to find local small businesses—up to 58%, according to SCORE.
In order to optimize for voice search, businesses need to understand the customers and their behavior. The next logical step is to determine which questions their business already ranks for, and move forward from there. For SEO, this means focusing on long-tail keywords since they’re more conversational.
Conclusion
Voice search has become part of daily life through voice assistants and smart speakers. SEO ties into this since search engines—primarily Google—are the source for the answers they provide. Ranking higher on smart speaker searches lies mostly in long-tail keywords for SEO.
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