Machine learning has powered an innovative platform for natural voice processing, speech recognition, and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), famous as Virtual Assistants. It is a kind of artificial intelligence that has made it possible for a machine to learn from the data provided and improve its performance.
Types of Virtual Assistants
Virtual assistance can be found on various devices, such as smart speakers, mobile operating systems, instant messaging apps, smartphones, wearable technologies, cars, and other appliances. Some famous examples of virtual assistants are Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Gemini, etc.
Consumers nowadays are more inclined towards instant and hands-free access to information, and businesses need to rethink their SEO strategies to stay competitive and relevant, slowly inclining towards voice search queries rather than in-text queries.
Evolution of Voice Search
Voice search is the most preferable way to conduct searches because of its speed and convenience. Voice searches can be made through devices capable of recording voice, such as smartphones and smart speakers.
The proliferation of smartphone usage has deliberately induced voice search options for user-friendliness. The accuracy rate of voice assistants has also improved with technological advancements, such as AI and machine learning development.
Voice searches can be easily synced with IoT devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Nest and can be easily used as a hands-free option for conducting safe searches on the internet. As the popularity of voice searches increases, businesses need to include it in their marketing strategies.
SEO Optimization for Voice Search
Businesses must adapt their SEO strategies to meet the growing demands of voice searches. The voice searches are more conversational and personal, so the content should be optimized accordingly. Since the voice queries are in the form of questions, businesses should include a list of common FAQs in their blogs and articles.
The content on a webpage should answer all the common queries a consumer will have in mind within the niche. Proper headings such as ‘how to’, ‘why does’, and ‘what is’ can be used to anticipate the audience.
The content on a webpage should include SEO keywords, but apart from that, long-tail keywords should also be used, as they will match the conversational tone and usage of long phrases in voice searches.
Local SEO for Virtual Assistants
A significant chunk of the voice search traffic comes from local searches, particularly from mobile app users. Businesses should ensure that their Google My Business Listing Is updated and accurate. Companies should provide contact details, business hours and links to their web pages.
Keyword selection can be based on local keywords to include the specific locations or addressees which are significant for the business. The business page should have maximum positive reviews because voice assistance often recommends the highest-scoring businesses for search queries.
Mobile Optimization
It is observed that most of the voice search queries are generated through smartphones. Therefore, businesses should ensure their website is mobile-friendly on a desktop or laptop.
Websites should be optimized for mobile viewing, as getting indexed under Google’s mobile-first indexing is essential. A slow-loading webpage will never be considered for this listing. The webpage should be seamless across any screen size, and the information displayed should be easily accessible on a mobile device.
Schema Markup and Data Structure
Virtual assistance is based on the data structure used to extract information from different websites. Businesses can implement schema markup to improve the chances of appearing at the top of the results when someone places a voice query.
Data structure helps the search engine understand the context of the content and facilitates voice assistance in recognizing and learning the data to present it to the audience. The information can be detected easily for quick answering. Landing a rich snippet can be supported with the schema markup.
AMP and Page Speed Insights
Accelerated Mobile Pages help AMP pages load faster on mobile devices, which allows the voice assistant to access the webpage and present the information to the user. It will first facilitate web page ranking.
Google’s Page Speed Insights can detect and analyze the speed regularly. This will further identify any areas that need improvement. The website can be optimized by compressing the images, enabling auto-caching of the browser, and minifying the CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.
Future of Voice Search Queries and SEO
Voice search technology is continuously evolving and affecting SEO. As the NLP improves, virtual assistants can understand complex queries and can be extensively used by consumers for their product or service-related queries.
Suppose a business wants to rank its website at the top of the best recommendations by voice assistants so that its products and services are easily marketed to customers. In that case, they should opt for SEO optimization per the adaptation required for voice search queries.
Businesses should optimize their website content using natural language, long-tail keywords, local SEO, mobile page optimization, easy view and convenience. It will help companies to stay ahead of the curve in maintaining and improving their search rankings.