How Voice Search is Changing Online Marketing, Part 2

In part one of this two-part blog series, we went over some of the simple basics of voice search in the online marketing world. We looked at how prevalent these searches are, how they’re growing, and why your business needs to be on top of them.

In today’s blog, we’ll go over some of the specific changes voice searches are starting to impact within the SEO industry. Our SEO Werkz experts don’t recommend making massive changes to every tag you use based on voice search, of course, but there are definitely some best practices you should be aware of.

Search Query Changes

Perhaps the biggest effect of voice searches is a wide-sweeping change to the way queries are incorporated. If you’re looking for Chinese food in Salt Lake City, for instance, a typical text search you’d enter into a mobile or desktop search bar would read something like “Chinese food Salt Lake City” or “Chinese delivery Salt Lake City.”

If you were searching for the same thing using voice search, however, your query would be very different. You might say something like, “Where’s the closest Chinese food restaurant?’ Essentially, voice searches allow users to be much more specific about their intent.

Auto-Correct

In addition, virtual assistants like Siri or others can automatically revise search queries to reflect intent, making them more accurate. They can add keywords and re-phrase various queries in no time at all. Some may worry that this conversion limits processing, but this clearly is untrue.

AI and RankBrain

Google has been on top of voice search trends for years. Dating back to 2013, they’ve been releasing algorithm updates to help focus on machine learning and natural language use. One tool that remains valuable here is Google RankBrain, which is a machine-learning system that launched in 2015 and is now considered the third-most important ranking factor.

Ranking 1^st Overall

In most cases, virtual assistants will highlight only the top search result to match a user’s query. For this reason, users often don’t see positions 2 and 3 for a search – making ranking first overall even more important in this area than it already is for search engine optimization in general. Here are a few tips we can offer here:

• Make topics extremely clear for Google to understand and serve customers. Remember that some virtual assistants will only pull excerpts from your pages, so content should reflect clarity and practicality.
• Use natural language instead of basic keywords – using questions and phrases that your audience is likely to use is very important.
• Offer content that matches the intent of the searcher in informative and relevant ways.

For more on how voice search is changing internet marketing, or to learn about any of our SEO services, speak to the pros at SEO Werkz today.