Voice technologies have been growing in leaps and bounds over the last several years. By now, pretty much everyone has at least a passing familiarity with ubiquitous voice interfaces like Siri, Alexa, Google Home, and Cortana, as well as the many in-home and mobile devices these programs function on. All users have to do is ask a question or give a command and the digital assistant will hup to.
“When is the next Knicks game? Get me directions to Madison Square Garden. Find tickets to the next Knicks game.” In a matter of seconds, users can conveniently let their devices do all the work, thanks to voice search, and businesses need to pay attention if they want to remain relevant and competitive.
The question is: what can you do to capitalize on voice search? How is it changing search engine optimization and how can you keep up? With a preferred vendor like Next Level Technology to provide you with expertise and help you find appropriate solutions, you’ll stay ahead of the game, but you’ll also need to understand how voice search is affecting the SEO market.
Voice Search is Expanding
As a consumer yourself, you probably already enjoy voice search capabilities. You’re not alone. It is estimated that as soon as 2020, half of all search activity will be conducted by voice. This is partially because voice search has become incredibly accurate.
It wasn’t that long ago that voice search technologies could be counted on to get search queries wrong almost more often than right, even when users spoke clearly. This is because search algorithms were not adept at interpreting natural speech patterns.
With the implementation of programming designed to accurately interpret longer search phrases, like complete sentences, voice search has “hit the threshold of human accuracy for voice recognition”, according to Google. This is great for consumers, but what does it mean for businesses practicing SEO?
Affect of Voice Search on SEO
Consider your SEO strategy when it comes to keywords. In the past, choosing the right keywords to optimize online content like blog posts and advertising meant choosing concise, descriptive phrases, or more recently, utilizing long-tail keywords to increase relevance and decrease competition.
When people perform voice searches, they are not typing in just a few keywords, they are speaking in complete sentences and using natural speech patterns. As a result, the keywords and keyword phrases you’ve become accustomed to using for SEO simply aren’t going to provide a good match. In other words, you need to change your strategy.
Necessary Changes
For starters, you need to figure out how to answer the questions customers are asking. What is your audience looking for? What might they say aloud? The structure of your content and the way you optimize must match up to new and different ways in which users are performing searches.
Optimizing means embracing natural speech patterns and plain language. It means including geographical information, because software is designed to search in proximity to users. Naturally, you also need to provide relevant and engaging content at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. With a partner like Next Level Technology to help you with your online marketing strategy, you can take advantage of voice search and make the most of SEO moving forward.
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