Impact of Voice-based Search on Modern SEO

The advent of smartphones has unarguably changed the future of digital marketing. Google’s mobile-friendly updates compel companies to accept the fact that mobile is the future. Thus, companies across the world are now keeping mobiles on their radar to shape up their digital marketing strategies.

SEO, a critical and an integral part of digital marketing is also affected by the evolution of smartphones and voice-based searches. Local searches through mobile devices have already dominated the conventional ways of searching for information.

Due to major technological breakthroughs, digital marketing has become dynamic in nature. One such technological advancement is voice searches through mobile devices. Technology is aimed at making lives easier, and voice-based searches are its best example.

With voice searching, you don’t need to type a keyword or phrase on your device to gather information; all you need to do is just speak your query to get the results. Voice searches have changed the outlook of finding information through smartphones. Further, voice-based searching has affected SEO equations, which is why marketers nowadays, are considering these crucial changes and trying to incorporate them as a part of their SEO tactics.

Let’s check out some of the striking stats of voice searches:

• In coming times, the voice-based search is going to explode. A report by USA Today shows that the word error rates had come down to roughly 8 percent from 25 percent a few years ago.
• According to Google, 55% of teens and 41% of adults use voice search on a daily basis. Though, this information was published in 2014; you can estimate up to what extent voice searches would have increased with the rise in smartphone users.
• 20% of mobile queries are voice searches. (Google)
• 58% of people have used voice search to find local business information. (Search Engine Land)

Why Voice Search?

Technology has not only made our lives trouble-free but also left us fascinated and compelled to think what’s next? Voice search is the outcome of the need to work at a faster pace. Today, each one of us loves to perform things on the go, and voice search enables us to do the same. Moreover, it eliminates the need for typing texts and keywords to search for information.

The reasons for its soaring popularity are pretty straightforward, speed and desire to perform a search with ease.

Also Read: What Is Voice Search And How It Helps Ecommerce Businesses?

How Will it Effects SEO?

Here mentioning some factors that show how SEO will be affected because of the increasing popularity of voice-based searches.

Keyword Research

From the very beginning, keywords used to be the heart of SEO but with the passage of time its importance has been decreasing. Due to excessive low-quality keywords spam content that captured different websites, Google has ultimately minimized the relevance of keyword-focused search queries.

However, keywords still form a critical part of SEO that helps in attaining high rankings on SERPs. Due to voice-based search over smartphones, keyword research is going to change. Now, the focus will be on embedding keywords in useful content to create as per users’ intent, which is going to be a significant challenge for SEO professionals.

Further, in the coming times, formal keyword phrases will be highly used. Understand this with an example, if one is looking for tips on content marketing then instead of typing “tips to write effective content” he/she will say “how to create or what are the tips to create effective content.”

Question-Based Searches Will Be in Demand

With the aid of voice searching, users do not have to type keywords again and again to the relevant results. Just speaking the keyword phrase is enough to get the desired result.

For instance, rather than typing text “Indian restaurant,” a user can ask, “Where do we get Indian food?”

Thus, due to voice-based searches technology, users will focus to enter a full query in question forms rather inserting keyword texts. So, it won’t be wrong to presume that in the following days, question-based queries like who, how, what, when, where, why are going to explode. Therefore, be prepared and give an essential tweak to your SEO strategy to become more focused on getting high rankings for mobile-oriented sites.

Conversational Content will Grab Center Stage

Natural content will gain more preference or weight for your SEO campaign. Try to incorporate your targeted keywords in your content so that you could get the desired results for SEO services. In short, humanize your content. Create it as per users’ intent, which means the content should look like a natural piece of content aligned so closely with the users’ query. But, at the same time, you also have to be focused towards your marketing goals.

Local SEO Will Play a Crucial Role

For professionals, voice-based searching will throw the need to focus on Local SEO. Present day users like to search for local information through their smartphones.

For instance, if one lives in Delhi and needs a gynecologist, then he/she will ask “where is gynecologist in USA?” Thus, local search engine optimization will grab the center stage, when it comes to searching information via voice search.

Also Read: How To Make The Most Out Of Local SEO In 2021

Future of Voice-Based Searches

Domino’s report says that 65% of their sales are generated through digital channels in the USA, including both website and mobile app comprising hands-free ordering through voice-search. Well, it is not bad stats to consider and assume that in the coming times, voice search is going to capture over the smartphones.

Bottom-Line

The information, I highlighted above stands for how voice-based search is influencing SEO. If you are a business owner, then it would be beneficial for you to consider the importance of voice search and tweak your SEO strategy accordingly to rank well in SERPs.