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Just a few years ago, it was predicted that voice commands would dominate the way humans interact with devices, and would eventually completely replace keyboard searches. However, statistics clearly show that traditional search is doing well all the time, with voice search accounting for 1/3 of all searches.
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Voice search is a way for a user to communicate with devices, or more specifically a search engine, using voice commands. The technology has been implemented not only for smartphones, where we use it most often, but also for computers and other mobile devices. Voice search is based on NLP (Natural Language Processing) and TTS (Text-To-Speech) speech synthesis.
Admittedly, the reason for its creation, was to make technology easier to use for people with disabilities, but everyone has started using it.
According to 2018 Google data, up to 27% of people worldwide use voice search
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/search/voice-search-mobile-use-statistics/
In Poland, however, it is a moderately popular search method, but the number of users using this technology continues to grow every year. Poland is not a strategic market for voice assistants, despite the fact that the Google assistant already works in Polish from 2019, its capabilities are heavily truncated, compared to, for example, the English version. Not to mention that in the case of popular voice assistants, such as Siri or Alexa, we still can't wait for Polish language versions, despite the announcements.
Despite the current state of affairs, it is to be expected that sooner or later most of us will be giving commands to devices by simply talking to them and using them as voice search engines.
Giving commands to smartphones by speaking to them is rather the domain of young people, and teenagers are best at it. However, already the vision of voice control of, for example, smart home systems seems to be a great convenience also for representatives of older age groups.
As proven by PWC statistics ( https://www.pwc.com/us/en/advisory-services/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/voice-assistants.pdf) from a group of Americans they surveyed, as many as 44% of them use voice search to set the right temperature at home, turn lights and alarms on and off, or close garage doors and gates.
Many have high hopes for this new search method. IT giants are well aware that thanks to machine learning and ever-improving NLP technologies, it will eventually come to the point where voice communication with devices will be really simple and, above all, effective.
95% accuracy of voice searches
Already, Google's voice search in English has an accuracy rate of 95%, a great result. Currently, all major companies have their voice assistant, voice search, the most popular are:
Of which the pioneer here is definitely Google, the company's voice search already supports more than 100 languages.
At the beginning of the computer era, their users gave them commands by typing lines of text from the keyboard. The invention of the computer mouse by D.Engelbart in the 1960s, and the creation of the graphical user interface (GUI) in 1983 by Apple, was a major step forward. They made computers easier to use, easy enough for ordinary people to use. This ushered in the era of personal computers.
Another technological revolution was the emergence of touch screens and touch phones, the first of which was presented by IBM. Then Jobs' brand perfected the touch technology and presented the first i-Phone, and so began the revolution that ushered in the mobile era, because can you imagine life without a phone?
Touchscreens have made it possible for each of us to have our own small, personal computer that is convenient and easy to use, often staying connected to the internet almost constantly. Voice control and search are another milestone that takes us to a new level of interaction with devices. What is the current situation today?
Despite the fact that, according to Google's research, teenagers are leading the way in voice searches, with more than half of them using the solution, adults are not far behind either. As many as 41% of them use voice search via voice commands.
We can speak about 180 words in a minute, write about 50
Voice search is definitely more convenient and much faster than traditional[4], after all, we speak faster than we write, in a minute we can write about 40-60 words, while we can speak as many as 180.
Despite the fact that we are accustomed to using smartphones with a classic touch interface, in certain situations we use voice commands much more often. When? When we have both hands occupied, that is, during:
We reach for voice control when it might be dangerous to use the phone or when it's faster for us to say something to the device than to interrupt the activity being performed.
In addition to specific situations, there is also an apparent tendency to use voice assistants for specific purposes. Most often, we use them to check the weather, turn on music, set alarms and send text messages to friends or ask the assistant to dial their phone number and call them.
This is the situation with smartphones. As I mentioned earlier, smart home systems, where voice searches are used to control installations and devices to save energy, increase security and make it easier to perform daily chores, are very popular, including in Poland.
Let's start with what distinguishes voice search from traditional search. In the case of voice search, queries are longer and more natural than those entered via a keyboard. Additionally, the keywords used in these queries are often in their modified, not basic form, as they frequently take the shape of questions.
For example, let's compare voice searches for a good café in Wrocław, where we can have a nice coffee:
Another example, when we're looking for affordable accommodation in Kalisz:
As you can see, the difference is small but noticeable. When speaking to the assistant, we tend to use more detailed queries that resemble a normal conversation.
When optimizing a website according to Google Voice Search, it's crucial to focus on long-tail keyword positioning. These phrases don't consist of just one, two, or three keywords but rather entire expressions or questions associated with them.
Optimizing a page for voice search is all about giving the best possible answer to the question asked by the user.
Optimization of content, code and page load speed
We can divide the optimization of a site according to on-site SEO into three parts, namely: on-page content optimization, code optimization and page loading speed, especially on mobile devices, i.e. smartphones and tablets. Each of these elements is important, and the best results come from the synergy of all aspects. Let's start with content optimization.
Content optimization on a website involves the placement and proper density of keyword phrases and proper formatting of the text. Google bots not only read keywords their number and frequency, but also the structure of the text. What does this mean?
First of all, key phrases should be in the headlines, in the content and in the introduction and summary. More key phrases does not mean better at all, when we overdo it with them, the search engine will consider our site as low-value spam and drop it lower in the SERP (Google search results).
Secondly, the text should also present itself properly, we do not write long blocks of text, we divide them into shorter, easier to digest paragraphs separated by headings. Such content is also suitable for mobile devices. It's good if our posts have bullets, which make the content more readable for people and better rated by algorithms.
To ensure that the content on your website is tailored to voice queries, first think carefully about what questions on a given topic users will find on specific pages or in blog posts. If you already know this, it's a good idea to include these queries in both headlines and text content.
There are several useful tools on the market, including free ones, to help you determine what questions users are asking, these include:
In the case of Answer the Public ( https://answerthepublic.com/ ), by typing in a topic of interest, you will be presented with a list of related questions in an easy-to-read, graphical form, divided into ordered sections. This is one of the most popular (for good reason in my opinion) tools, with the added advantage that you can test it for free, as each user can search for two phrases once a day for free.
It is available in desktop and mobile versions. In the results you will find answers consisting of whole questions, so basically you have ready-made long tail phrases given to you, which you just need to put in the content.
Example of Answer the Public search results:
Senuto's tool ( https://www.senuto.com/pl/monitoring-pozycji/) allows you to see what phrases a site is displaying for in Direct Answer based on its domain address.
Due to the fact that voice searches are often used for local search, it is a good idea to include data on the site regarding the location of the company. The exact address of the company, can appear not only on the home page but also necessarily in the footer. In addition, it is worth optimizing the contact tab through meta title and description tags.
Location-related phrases can also appear in blog posts or offers. It is important that the data be consistent with those in your company's business card on Google, which of course you should also refine as much as possible.
It is a good practice to have a tab or a subpage of FAQs or QA on the website, which is used to categorize content.
How to enable voice search in Google?
When it comes to optimizing the site from the technical side, attention should be paid to elements such as structural data, adaptation of the site to mobile devices and its loading time.
Structured data (rich snippet) are tags that allow you to describe the type of content on a website and categorize it. They are located between the address of the page and its title, it happens that Google generates them on its own based on the correct semantics of the code (so it is worth taking care of it), if this is not the case, you need to add them yourself. Learn how to implement Rich Snippet and improve your site's CTR in Google search results.
There are more than a dozen different structured data tags, among the most relevant we can mention:
To see how the placement of these meta tags affects a page's position in search results, it's worth comparing them before and after adding a rich snippet.
Since most voice searches are done on smartphones and tablets, optimizing the site for them is a must. The site must be responsive. Developers have known this for a long time and today on the web you will find few, sites that are not made in RWD, usually they are old sites. Today responsiveness is simply a standard, at Hauerpower interactive agency we can't even imagine making a site that is not adapted to mobile.
If you already have a site but don't know if it's living up to its full potential and is properly executed, it's worth commissioning a seo audit that will tell you what to improve to make the site more visible in Google.
It is also worthwhile to perform site optimization on wordpress for sites based on this cms. In our experience, they very often improve technical parameters contributing to improved conversions and loading times.
User Experience of the website and rejection rate
Thoughtful UX (user experience) is also important. Websites that are not simple and intuitive for users are quickly abandoned by them, resulting in an increased bounce rate, which in turn results in a lower rating of the site by Google's algorithms.
It is also very important to optimize page load time, and it consists of several factors. To make the page load faster, you need, among other things, to minimize JS and CSS code, avoid multiple redirects, take care of Gzip compression and optimize image files, and you can read more about this in a separate text on how to adapt your site to mobile devices.
Summary
There are a lot of factors that go into optimizing a page to make it the best possible match for Google Voice Search results (and it's worth remembering that we're only talking about on page activities all the time). Some of them you can try to take care of yourself, with others you will need professional help. Get in touch with us if you want your site to be maximized for voice search.
However, all optimization activities are important because optimization results:
Optimizing for voice search is worth doing the extra work, as it's an easy way to get really high search engine rankings. The competition here is low, much lower than for traditional search. You shouldn't ask if it's worth doing, it's better to ask how to do it, which you already know if you've read this post carefully.
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