10 Epic Formulas to Optimize for Voice Search in 2024
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 9:15 am
In 2020, 50 percent of all searches were made using voice search. If you’re in the marketing industry, you’ve likely come across this statistic.
In 2014, Andrew Ng, then Chief Scientist at Baidu, made a prediction about the future of voice search in China. This prediction was later taken out of its original context and has since been cited by marketers as a prediction about voice search in general.
Despite this murky statistic, we’ve seen significant growth in digital assistants over the past few years. You can use voice recognition to ask questions and get answers without delay from any internet-connected device.
Voice search now accounts for 20 percent of all searches made across Google apps and Android devices. This is not a temporary phenomenon. If the current trend continues, voice search will become central to our daily lives.
So how can you take advantage of the growing popularity of voice search? Since we’re still in the transition, there’s no need to rush to make your website voice-friendly—at least not yet. The standard Google search page still gets the lion’s share of queries.
To prepare for what's to come italy mobile phone numbers database you can check out these optimization techniques:
Focus on Natural Speaking
Devices that use voice recognition are designed to process natural language. The majority of queries that Google Assistant receives are natural language. People talk to digital assistants as if they were asking a question to another person. This is the opposite of how people use text search boxes. Voice search queries are more conversational and tend to be longer than text-based queries. For example, you could type "Venice to Rome," but a voice search query would be more like "How to get from Venice to Rome?"
Therefore, you should broaden your search intent to the types of questions that can be asked via voice search. Consider conversation intent.
Create Long-Tail Keywords
This is related to the need for natural speaking. Long-tail keywords are more specific than standard keywords and are usually around three to five words long. Therefore, they provide an opportunity for smaller businesses to rank higher on Google for certain searches. Long-tail keywords will increase in importance in the future as digital assistants that use voice recognition prefer natural language.
Optimize for Mobile and Local
There is an overlap between mobile and voice search, as most voice search queries are made on mobile devices. Therefore, optimizing for voice search also means optimizing for mobile. This includes using mobile-optimized content and layouts, and optimizing for speed. Faster mobile site speed leads to faster business success .
Voice search offers an opportunity for small local businesses to appear in top results. Take advantage of local business listings for your company’s locations by making sure you have completed all of these listings and they are accurate.
Use Semantics to Structure Content
You should try to create content that answers users’ questions as quickly as possible. Integrate structured data markup into your website and answer questions by making long-tail topics part of your website content. Using structured data markup can help search engines understand and crawl your data more efficiently.
Make Your Answers Short and Concise
Google has developed its own voice-controlled virtual assistant, the Google Assistant. Designed for mobile and smart home devices, the Google Assistant can have two-way conversations without always needing a trigger phrase like "Hey Google." It can control your devices, access your calendar and other personal data, find information online, and play content on compatible devices. For developers, there's also Actions on Google, a developer platform for extending the functionality of the Google Assistant.
According to Google’s voice search evaluation guidelines, voice search results should be concise and to the point. The average answer is just 29 words.
From the example above, we can see the general preference for short answers. The length of the answer should be appropriate to the complexity of the content. Depending on the specific question, you need to evaluate whether a more detailed or short explanation would be more useful to the user.
In addition to length, answers must also be formulated correctly. This concerns grammar, sentence structure, and source citation. Clear and understandable answers serve the interests of users.
Rhetoric refers to speaking clearly with clear pronunciation and articulation. Optimal voice search responses will make the response sound natural. In the last example with the world population, both the formulation and rhetoric suffer from the number not being rounded and the response will not sound natural.
Make Sure Your Website Loads Fast
Websites that load quickly have an advantage in Google’s voice search results. Backlinkoth reported that the typical loading speed of a voice search result is faster than most web pages. According to PageSpeed analytics, the average time to first byte (TTFB) of a voice search result is 0.54 seconds, while the global average is 2.1 seconds.
In 2014, Andrew Ng, then Chief Scientist at Baidu, made a prediction about the future of voice search in China. This prediction was later taken out of its original context and has since been cited by marketers as a prediction about voice search in general.
Despite this murky statistic, we’ve seen significant growth in digital assistants over the past few years. You can use voice recognition to ask questions and get answers without delay from any internet-connected device.
Voice search now accounts for 20 percent of all searches made across Google apps and Android devices. This is not a temporary phenomenon. If the current trend continues, voice search will become central to our daily lives.
So how can you take advantage of the growing popularity of voice search? Since we’re still in the transition, there’s no need to rush to make your website voice-friendly—at least not yet. The standard Google search page still gets the lion’s share of queries.
To prepare for what's to come italy mobile phone numbers database you can check out these optimization techniques:
Focus on Natural Speaking
Devices that use voice recognition are designed to process natural language. The majority of queries that Google Assistant receives are natural language. People talk to digital assistants as if they were asking a question to another person. This is the opposite of how people use text search boxes. Voice search queries are more conversational and tend to be longer than text-based queries. For example, you could type "Venice to Rome," but a voice search query would be more like "How to get from Venice to Rome?"
Therefore, you should broaden your search intent to the types of questions that can be asked via voice search. Consider conversation intent.
Create Long-Tail Keywords
This is related to the need for natural speaking. Long-tail keywords are more specific than standard keywords and are usually around three to five words long. Therefore, they provide an opportunity for smaller businesses to rank higher on Google for certain searches. Long-tail keywords will increase in importance in the future as digital assistants that use voice recognition prefer natural language.
Optimize for Mobile and Local
There is an overlap between mobile and voice search, as most voice search queries are made on mobile devices. Therefore, optimizing for voice search also means optimizing for mobile. This includes using mobile-optimized content and layouts, and optimizing for speed. Faster mobile site speed leads to faster business success .
Voice search offers an opportunity for small local businesses to appear in top results. Take advantage of local business listings for your company’s locations by making sure you have completed all of these listings and they are accurate.
Use Semantics to Structure Content
You should try to create content that answers users’ questions as quickly as possible. Integrate structured data markup into your website and answer questions by making long-tail topics part of your website content. Using structured data markup can help search engines understand and crawl your data more efficiently.
Make Your Answers Short and Concise
Google has developed its own voice-controlled virtual assistant, the Google Assistant. Designed for mobile and smart home devices, the Google Assistant can have two-way conversations without always needing a trigger phrase like "Hey Google." It can control your devices, access your calendar and other personal data, find information online, and play content on compatible devices. For developers, there's also Actions on Google, a developer platform for extending the functionality of the Google Assistant.
According to Google’s voice search evaluation guidelines, voice search results should be concise and to the point. The average answer is just 29 words.
From the example above, we can see the general preference for short answers. The length of the answer should be appropriate to the complexity of the content. Depending on the specific question, you need to evaluate whether a more detailed or short explanation would be more useful to the user.
In addition to length, answers must also be formulated correctly. This concerns grammar, sentence structure, and source citation. Clear and understandable answers serve the interests of users.
Rhetoric refers to speaking clearly with clear pronunciation and articulation. Optimal voice search responses will make the response sound natural. In the last example with the world population, both the formulation and rhetoric suffer from the number not being rounded and the response will not sound natural.
Make Sure Your Website Loads Fast
Websites that load quickly have an advantage in Google’s voice search results. Backlinkoth reported that the typical loading speed of a voice search result is faster than most web pages. According to PageSpeed analytics, the average time to first byte (TTFB) of a voice search result is 0.54 seconds, while the global average is 2.1 seconds.