Blog: Voice Seach SEO | What is Voice Search? | OrbitWeb

What is Voice Search?

Voice search allows users to perform a search on the internet by verbally asking a question on a smartphone, a smart device or a computer. A query is answered by a search engine or a digital assistant.

“Ok, Google what’s the closest bakery?”

“Hey Siri, is Family Grocers open today?”

“Alexa, Where can I find portobello mushrooms?”

“Hey Cortana, how do I edit a PDF?”

Does this sound like you? 

Then you are familiar with the convenience of using Voice Search to get the answers to your most pressing questions. In this post, we will cover voice search, what it is, why it is important for your business, and the future of digital marketing. 

How does Voice Search work?

It works by reading the result that is pulled into the featured snippet, which is in Position Zero. When you ask a question to your Voice Assistant (Siri, Google Home, Amazon Echo, etc.) it will be using the information in the featured snippet to answer your question.

For desktop users, voice search is less common, but obtaining Position Zero has other benefits for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies. Once obtained, your website will gain the following immediate benefits for mobile and desktop searches.

• Improved click-through rate
• Increased traffic
• Greater brand visibility

Why is Voice Search important for business?

Internet searches have evolved from desktop to mobile and most recently to using voice assistants at home. Regardless of it’s Apple’s Siri, Google’s Home, Amazon Echo, or Microsoft Cortana, people are searching for what they need hands-free. The following stats show that:

• 50% of people now use voice search when researching products according to Social Media Today.
• 40% of adults now use voice search once per day.
• 50% of all searches will be voice searches by this year (2020)

Activities like shopping, email management, calendar management, and many others are being supported as well with more added every day.

How to Optimize for Voice Search? (voice search SEO)

The most important element to ranking well in Google is by focusing on the user, but here are a few things you can do: 

1. Natural, conversational Tone: Write content in a natural and conversational tone.
2. Focus on providing helpful answers rather than stuffing keywords in your content.
3. Focus on User Intent: There are three broad categories that cover most web search queries: informational, navigational, and transactional. These are also called “do, know, go.” 
4. Contextual Answers: Google is focusing on user intent for more accurate and personalized results. The contextual results are based on user intent.

The future of Voice Search SEO & Voice Search Marketing

Companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon have incorporated voice-enabled AI assistants. This increase in the use of voice search artificial intelligence is a clear sign of an evolving future. The number of businesses prepared with good Voice Search Marketing is still low, however. This means that there is a great opportunity to meet your market. 

Each second, Google processes over 40,000 search queries, and that number steadily grows each year. Our need for instantaneous answers has not changed, what has changed is the way we search for those answers.