Here at Pumpkin Web Design in Preston, we love tech developments as much as anyone. With Google Home and Amazon Echo becoming the latest in a range of gadgets designed to be personal assistants, its clear that voice search will be the way forward. But how can voice search impact on SEO? And how can companies and businesses stay on top of their search engine presence? We have produced this guide to answer your questions about voice search and provide tips for voice search and SEO.
The rise of voice search
Its not just the cool gadgets that are promoting voice search. In fact, most people are voice searching using their mobile device. A study by Stone Temple Consulting found that:
⦁ People age 24 and under are 33% more likely to use voice search in public
⦁ 70% of people think voice search is fast and easy
⦁ Less than 20% of people don’t use it at all
⦁ 70% of people prefer voice search to typing
As a result, it is obvious that the ease and speed of a response from voice search means that people are more likely to increase their use of voice searches over time. And companies need to jump on board with this.
Voice first
However, its not just voice search that companies need to worry about. Its voice first. This refers to the personal assistant gadgets being used.
The difference between these and ordinary voice search on a mobile device, is that the answer is given verbally to the searcher, with no screen at all. This means that any result other than the top spot will be ignored completely.
This is huge for businesses and companies, where although they will get much less traffic from ranking 3-5, they still get some organic traffic. Voice first removes this possibility at all. In fact, searchers wont even see the name of your page, reducing brand presence altogether.
Tips for Voice Search and SEO
While this is still a growing feature of human interaction with the internet, it is clearly more important than ever to get your website and content to the top spot. In the future, this could be the only spot.
It is also essential that you focus on creating content that answers direct questions, quickly and easily, as most people will be asking direct, conversational questions to the personal assistant.