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Unfortunately, this is not that doom and gloom article announcing that PPC and SEO are no more. Rather we’ll discuss how audio search has shaken things up for the digital marketers.

In the world of search, the voice is an emerging trend and of course something that should be kept an eye on.

Google algorithms change once or twice in a day. But rarely do we experience major ranking fluctuations in it. Those are the updates marketers are concerned about.

One such important trend that may rule the SEO is:

Voice Search on Mobile

Google and Siri might have come in the picture long ago, but it is now that this search has got the ball rolling. Initially, consumers were not at all thrilled with this technology. It was a fun voice recognition gimmick that everyone may want to have fun with. According to research performed in those initial years, 83% of iOS users stated that they didn’t use Siri at all. But today, Google and Siri are leading the way.

With adaption to this new search, you can think of it growing exclusively.

Are you ready to learn more about it?

What is VoiceSearch?

It can be termed as a speech recognition technology allowing a user to perform a search through voice command. It is a two-way communication that assists the users to complete their tasks in real time.

Users nowadays expect a prompt and direct answer when they perform any search. And it is an ideal. In fact, if you dig a little deep in the context of voice queries, you will find it totally different from the specific keyword text search in the search engine.

Voice Search Gaining Popularity

Voice recognition is obviously nothing new, but to date, the practical application remained limited to shouting with anger at a phone to make it understand things or to bring it in exercise to create humor.

However, changing search trends have shown that practical voice interaction is finally a real thing.

It may be hyped as the “coming” technology, but the fact is that 40% of the users have made it today’s technology. Every adult user performs a voice search at least once in a day.

Remaining 60% started using it in the past year, and 40% in the past six months only. With these statistics, we can have an idea that “coming” technology has arrived.

So why are smart speakers and voice-activated search engines gaining such a momentum? Voice has become the opening door for innovation as it provides an appealing and personal and really natural means of interaction. Just think of playing music, ordering a pizza, getting breaking news and in fact turning on your light just through your voice. This is enough to explain why 40% of users have replaced their textual search with voice search seamlessly.

This is one of the massively growing markets and it won’t be wrong to say that Amazon Echo and Google Home are leading the show.

It started with Siri back in 2010 and ever since it started gaining success in the digital world, the market boomed up with the software offering a refined voice search facility. Today we have a big list of voice recognition systems:

Siri (2010)
Amazon Alexa (2014)
Microsoft Cortana (2015)
Google Assistant, Amazon Echo (2016)
Alibaba AliGenie, Samsung Bixby (2017)

Every year this voice search worked on the systems and headed towards success. And eventually, it has grounded its reputation in the market. Today the biggest reason behind the increasing rate of voice searches is a better voice recognition system.

Before getting in how voice searches impact SEO and digital marketing, let’s pay a look at related statistics:

46% of voice search users think of a local business daily
58% of the consumers used voice search to find local business information during last year
27% visit a local business website through voice search
76% of smart home speaker users search for local businesses once in a week with around 53% performing daily searches
The voice recognition market will hit $601 million industry by 2019

Impact on SEO

If voice search is the future, is it leaving any impact on SEO? Well, the answer to this is “Yes, it is”.

With a conventional search, a user types a question, or some keywords more commonly like “CA coaching Classes” or “Indian Cuisines”. With this you see a list of relevant sites helping you out. SEO here plays the role of bringing your site to the top of the list for such relevant searches.

And when a user asks the same to his or her digital assistant, two things come to a picture. Firstly, the search becomes more journalistic and secondly you won’t see any big list of results to choose from. It gives a very clear answer to a clear query.

However, this does not mean that SEO is no longer playing any role in it. In contrast to this, when a search gives just one answer, it makes the optimization even more critical. This is to make sure that your business is chosen from among so many. But with this, it is not like you need to determine a new pattern that is voice search.

Marketers just need to ensure that all the content is conversational and natural. This will help meet the Q and A pattern of voice search. There are a lot of tools like Schema Markup to make sure that Google has got most of the details of your business. Blogs were and will always be an important method to make your voice search successful. So, it is important to remember that voice search is equal to mobile search and portraying a mobile-friendly website is thus more crucial than ever.

Since voice search is the next big thing, brands will rapidly catch up with it. And obviously, these should! In fact, all the massive tech players have started to invest in personal assistant and voice. So, the question is:

Why is Voice Search an Important thing for the Brands?

Since the voice recognition system is working wonderfully in all the areas, how brands could be expected to stay at bay from such advancement. Voice searches will shortly take away all the search methods. And here are the top reasons why it is important for huge brands:

a. Natural Speed -

The fact is, there is no other platform as fast as this voice search system. You just say out and have the concise results among you. For brands, it is one of the most required assets. You execute a command and your task is done there and then. You do not have to spend time looking for the alphabet on a keyboard and then enter your query.

b. Enhanced productivity -

Speaking is faster than typing. Rather than using a touchscreen or keyboard to get an answer to your query if you switch to speech, you will save a significant amount of time. And when you save time, you ultimately increase your productivity.

c.Time is Money – Save it

Since the frequency of speech is faster than writing words, it saves plenty of time. And when your consumers get their work done in seconds, you will be their only choice. When brands partner with the voice search, they are likely to stay above their competitors.

d. Massive Access -

One of the best things about voice recognition systems is these can be accessed by one and all. Like most of the users skip using search engine systems because they do not know the language to type in. However, everybody knows the art of speaking. And because voice searches are available in almost all the languages, the reach maximizes to infinity. This factor certainly increases the consumer ratio.

e. Increased Brand Attention with User Attention -

Are you a brand more concerned about your consumer’s comfort, their requirements, and tastes? Well, if yes, you can be the next big player. More you will take care of your consumer’s ease; more will be the user attention. So, it is better you step into the voice ecosystem as soon as possible.

How to Start in the Voice Search? -

With so many different platforms to operate and perform your voice search on, you may get confused about operating it. Well, there is a very simple solution to it. Voice searches are far easier.

Voice Search Anywhere -

No matter you are sitting inside your cabin or traveling out, speak out your query loudly and get back a relevant answer to it.

Simply tap the mic on the Google search bar and start speaking. This works on Android, iOS, windows and chrome browsers for mobile phones, laptops, and desktops.

For example: Say something like, “Who designed Eiffel Tower?”
It is easy and displays very relevant answers to your queries.

Apart from this Siri works well if you are an Apple device user, Google voice search goes well for the Android devices and Microsoft’s Cortana is useful when it comes to your PC and smartphone using their app.

Tips for optimizing for Voice Search

1. Page Speed -

Page speed plays a vital role in voice search SEO. According to Backlinko, an average voice search result page loads in 4.6 seconds which is certainly 52% fast if compared to an average page.

2. Answer Length -

Google looks concise and to the point answers for search results. A standard voice search result is just 29 words in length.

3.Reliable Domains -

Reliable domains are likely to produce voice search results extensively more than non-reliable domains.

4. Social Sharing -

Content that has a higher level of social engagement perform better in voice search.

5. Simplicity of Language -

Simple and easy to read content is easily optimized by the voice search engine. An average Google voice search result is written at a 9th-grade level.

6. The featured Snippet -

If your business appears in featured snippet it helps you a great degree to rank in voice search. 40.7% of the voice search answers come from a featured snippet.

Different Optimization Strategies of different Voice Search Engines -

*Google Assistant – Focus on a local pack and featured snippet. Together with this, Google play optimization is also taken into consideration to offer relevant results.

*Alexa – Pays attention to Bing places, featured snippets and Yelp.

*Cortana – Do better optimization for Microsoft App store

Siri – Optimize according to Google Assistant and also develop Siri compatible applications.

Bing Plays a Key Role -

We can see in all the four voice search processes, three of them Apple’s Siri, Cortana, and Alexa take in Bing search for basic information rescue. Facebook is also joining the league and Google obviously powers its very own Google Assistant.

In fact, voice searches may become a standard very soon. According to 2016 data, Bing represented that 25% of the searches conducted via windows 10 taskbar were all voice based. And if we talk about this number in 2018, it must have increased a great degree, considering the popularity of voice searches.

No matter the search engine you give value to, there are two main areas to pay attention to local listings and featured snippets.

On-Site SEO Optimization is Vital -

Despite all these strategies, old SEO is obviously the king. You cannot skip doing SEO optimization like interpreting page content, make users understand about your webpage, answer relevant queries and find out if your page is well optimized to rank on the search engine. Page authority has got a big role to get the featured snippets.

Is this the end for search? -

The most important question that strikes is: if this is the end for search or if old SEO will be dead soon? Well, voice search has been here than you probably think of it. It dates back to 2002. It is just that it became getting popularity with a rise in the use of smartphones. The digital assistants like Siri and Cortana grew increasingly. But SEO did not go out in any case.

Speech search is simply an additional interface and is not expected to replace old SEO in any case. This may change the technique or add some tasks to SEO optimization but won’t kill the good old SEO of course.

The key aim is to design a channel strategy and a perfect method for researching typed and voiced opportunity as a part of the entire process.

There are certain tips that you can use to stand out in the influx of searches. These will hit the airwaves soon and will help you rank in the first voice environment.

Google is just making a move to mobile marketing and sound search but that does not mean the end of desktop search obviously.

voice-enabled may complement what is already in place. Marketers will now pay attention to mobile, desktop and voice. And when there are lots of search engines handy to users, it increases the Google reputation undoubtedly.

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