29 May 2024 | By - Sudha Mariappan

Remember the time when we would spend hours of our time coming up with different keyword combinations so that you never miss top spot search results? Yes, we are talking about SEO.

But guess what? That era is now over and is starting with a new trend called the voice age or the conversational age.

We no longer type, we voice into our devices, which also reply back to us. Furthermore, do you know that those devices are not only ordering take outs and playing songs for you, but also now able to find businesses?

Those businesses could be yours!

This isn’t some futuristic fantasy we’re talking about. It is happening here and now. Voice assistant features have been there since the 2010s. Google was the first one to launch a voice assistant feature, making people call into a particular number and making them speak up their search query to get the results. Needless to say, it didn’t work well.

In 2011, Apple introduced Siri, the voice assistant followed by google, microsoft and amazon. Now the most prominent voice assistants are Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Google assistant.

60% of the users are using voice assistant features on their smartphones as of a recent survey, 4.2 billion users using voice assistant features worldwide.

That is a massive population that are users. As a business person, you can take advantage of the rapidly growing pool of potential customers, who are literally asking their devices to find what they need.

So how did voice search come into existence?

Since the 1950s, various machines were created to recognize digits spoken just by a single voice, which was a huge step into the world of voice research.

Later on, the machines were made to understand minimal words in the English language. In a surprising amount of time, the words those machines could recognize jumped to a thousand words, using the “ Hidden Markov” model.

After all these inventions, those machines were finally launched into the family market in the late 1980s, though it was costly.

Safe to say since the 2010s, the voice assistant feature has put us all on a chokehold with its immense benefits and the standard of living, as Google assistant can solely understand up to 230 million words from their user queries.

What made voice search popular?

People usually have a lot to explore, when they have time and convenience to stay at their house and search for businesses they might want to discover, they would want to search for the best.

But, instead of opening up google, typing out keywords to get to know about the business, they simply voice out their query and immediately get a response way faster than search engines.

It will not only feel natural but also conversational, almost as if you’re asking someone for tips.

Interesting thing is, when people speak the way they think, these advanced voice assistants such as alexa, google and siri, comprehend them quickly and are able to understand the users’ longer phrases and complete sentences.

How can voice search benefit digital marketing?

This advanced path of searching things can benefit digital marketing.

Long tail keywords are preferred: Voice searches listens to longer, more specific phrases that reflect natural conversation we have with each other. So, when you optimize your content for these long-tail keywords, it is crucial to make sure your business shows up in relevant searches.

For example, think "best pizza place with outdoor seating near me" instead of "pizza delivery."

Use Local SEO: "Near me" is a voice search that is used by every single person who uses the internet. You can feature your local business by optimizing your Google My Business listing and there you go, your local SEO is ready. Now when people voice search for your business niche which is nearby, your business will pop up.

Take advantage of the Featured Snippets: Featured snippets are those little answer boxes at the top of search results that appear when you type a particular keyword. The vice search assistant mainly takes those featured snippets to voice out the top search results.

Therefore, you need to optimize your content. You can do this by paid SEO, where you can get your business on top of the search result, and put your business at the forefront.

Master your voice search art to stay visible to your potential customers:

Identify your customers’ search pattern: You have to get to know about the buyer behavior to know how to sell the product. Their unique pattern of voice search may help you a lot with your business. For example, “authentic chinese restaurants” may be a search value when people want to try authentic places. If you own such a restaurant, identifying key search patterns of your customers will be a valuable asset.

Schema Markup: Schema markup is a method of furnishing search engines with more data about the content on our websites. It is a useful tool for search engines to comprehend your customers’ information more so that it’ll be able to place it in voice searches, featured snippets, as well as their knowledge panel.

Get Mobile-Friendly (literally): Billions of people use smartphones. If that is not enough information for you to get back and start optimizing your website for mobile friendly so that it loads quickly, offering a smooth user experience, you’ll be at a loss.

Make sure Your Website loads faster: Due to technology advancement, people just don’t want to be patient. They don't want to wait for information, especially when they're using voice search. Therefore, optimize your website speed for them to load faster and make sure the user has no issue browsing through your website. It’ll most probably improve your chances of ranking well in voice searches.

The Future is evolving, and Voice Search is Here to Stay:

There’s no doubt that the Voice search is here to stay, as it is a fundamental shift that has happened since the 1930s. As digital voice continues to evolve, businesses can use it to their tremendous advantage for digital marketing.

Voice search is faster and easier than typing. People are a lot more satisfied with the voice search system. It's perfect for multi-tasking such as cooking, taking care of the kids, and on the go tasks such as driving.

Voice search has this incredible ability to help visually impaired or people with disability to remove the barrier of typing.

With smart speaker devices such as Alexa, Siri and Google assistant becoming increasingly popular in homes, voice search is becoming ingrained in everyday life.

You will be refrained from one of the biggest opportunities, if your digital marketing strategy remains only in the world of keywords.

There are continuous transformations happening in the digital world because of voice search, which means that companies which will use this technology will ace this game just in time.

If you need any assistance in digital marketing feel free to connect with us at info@ontogendigital.com . Subscribe to us for more blogs.