How Voice Search Evolved for 2018

21 Jan 2018
Paid Ads Charlie Clark

“Hey, Google, how much is 92 times 30?”

2760

“Hey, Google, how’s the weather today?

Sunny, with a maximum of 24 Celsius degrees.

“Hey, Google, How will Voice Search influence SEO and Click Through Rates in 2018?”

What is Voice Search?

For whoever might not know what Voice Search is, it’s the feature that allows you to read out what you’d like to search for, instead of typing a query. Your words are sent over to servers where they are de-scrambled through speech recognition algorithms and then sent to the search engine to return your answer. The process only takes a couple of seconds and it delivers very accurate results. Voice Search has gained a lot of popularity over the past few years because word recognition has become more and more accurate and it allows people to ask questions in a variety of circumstances, such as while driving or cooking.

How popular is Voice Search?

Google Voice Search queries increased by 35x in 2017 compared to 2008 and it is set to increase even more with the rising popularity of home assistant speakers such as Google Home or Amazon Echo. Accuracy is also improving fast, which makes people want to use Voice Search rather than typing the question. Google claims its Voice Search recognition accuracy is now at 92{8e70974195c48f015656ec00029c2bf559b83ca472845d96d7b604466648386d}, growing from 75{8e70974195c48f015656ec00029c2bf559b83ca472845d96d7b604466648386d} in 2015 and the good news is that the more people use it, the better it gets.

How Will it Affect You and Your Online Business?

While voice search makes everybody’s life easier, it won’t change the SEO game so much, or, at least, not for the year to come. You’ll still have to stick to Google’s ranking factors, such as quality content, regular updates, on and off-page optimization and well written and compelling meta tags. But keep in mind that we don’t search with spoken words the same way we do when typing. That means we might see a rise in the long-tail search key-words and natural language queries that give a lot of contextual data on searcher’s intent.

One thing that voice search might affect, though, is the CTR (Click Through Rate) so you might want to take a look at the content you’re putting online. While devices like Google Home or Amazon Echo send a link to your phone with the site the information was taken from, if the info is not complex, people won’t want to follow through on your website to learn more. This is why you need to create a more complex and detailed content on your website.

How To Make Sure Voice Search Finds Your Website?

The good part is the user receives the website link the information was read from. So, one thing to do is to develop content with a conversational tone. Use voice searches yourself and see how it works! And use more long-tailed keywords. Optimize and produce content that answers very specific words but in spoken language. If searching for a shoe shop, people might search for “Shoe shop near me” or if they want to know what’s the football score, they’ll ask just that.

When it comes to Google My Business listing, you should make sure you fully complete your listing. Add every detail about your business you humanly can so you’ll show up in every specific search that’s related to your area of expertise. Are you a restaurant? Add your opening hours, produce content – recipes, wheelchair access, free parking and more. What will your customers WANT to know about booking a meal at your place – provide the answers!Or, even better! Hire someone like us to take care of the optimization of your website and take your mind off this. We’re constantly trying to be a step ahead of the game and come up with the best solutions for your problems. 

If you’d like to find tips on how to save money on Amazon with Voice Search, check out the Babble Out website.

Charlie Clark
Founder of Minty Digital. Charlie has over 10 years of experience within the Digital Marketing industry. Background in Project Management, SEO, and Google Ads.
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