With over 19 years in advertising sales, and working with many agencies, Greg is very experienced with working with clients of all sizes. He has also seen our services work first hand. Having the exact same real life experience selling digital advertising as our clients, he brings his ability to relate to everyone. Working with our partners allows him to continue to help sales teams and agencies grow their business, and at the same time, supporting the growth efforts of the end client. Greg is Google Analytics Certified.
When Apple’s Siri first came out back in 2011 the technologywas a novelty. It was cool to test out and sometimes provided informativeresults, but often the results were laughable. Not many people predictedvoice search would become a major digital trend of the future.
Voice search is defined as a speech recognition technology that allows users to search by saying terms aloud rather than typing them into a search field. Some examples of programs that have voice search capabilities are Google Assistant, Siri, Microsoft Cortana and Amazon Alexa. The proliferation of smart phones and other small, web-enabled mobile devices has spurred interest in voice search.
Three years ago, Google said that 20% of all searches were initiated by voice. While they haven’t updated that statistic yet, with more than a billion devices globally that feature the Google Assistant, it’s very likely that the percentage of searches initiated by voice has increased dramatically.
In fact, there’s so much interest that 41% of adults (and 55% of teens) use voice search daily. Also, by 2020, Comscore says that 50% of all searches will be voice searches. With the projected growth with this tool many businesses are questioning how to stay ahead. A new study from Uberall, says 96% of businesses are not voice search ready. Are you part of that group? If you are, it’s time to make some changes.
The number one factor contributing to low voice search scoresis inaccurate business information across online directories. Here aresome of the areas of error:
Understanding what consumers are searching for with voice search is important. According to a Google survey people want to get information about deals and sales, personalized tips, information about upcoming events, customer support and more, all of which are important to any business:
How does Voice Search Impact SEO Rankings?
Since the point of SEO is to rank websites accurately sousers can find the best information for their search as quickly as possible,user experience is ultimately, at the forefront of search engine optimization(SEO). Because of that, search engines are placing a higher emphasis onvoice search. Keep in mind that voice search SEO and traditional website SEOare different. Therefore, some factors that affect one, may not affectthe other. For example, voice search SEO is more conversational resultingin long sentences showing up in search queries, such as “Where can I find aplumber in Phoenix” rather than typed Google searches, which tend to be shorterlike “plumbers in Phoenix”.
Does Voice Search Drive Website Traffic to MyWebsite?
The answer is yes. Voice Search works the same way astraditional SEO. Since that’s the case,you still want to ensure that your business shows up in the search results.
So now that you know all of this, how does your business get found in Voice Search? Here’s a quick overview of areas of focus:
Voice search is here and we’ve included it in all our SEOofferings for our partners, including search through Amazon. Formost local businesses, 90% of their traffic is from Google, and a very smallpercentage is from Amazon. Our optimization is platform agnostic, whichmeans we are doing good things for websites, regardless of the searchengines. Amazon does have an immediate impact on local business withvoice search, and our SEO plans and recommendations account for that.
Considering that nearly all the steps you can take tooptimize for voice search are beneficial to your Search Engine Marketingefforts overall, the decision to focus on voice optimization should be an easyone. Incorporating this strategy has several benefits businesses arerewarded with, including:
Voice search offers so many opportunities. It can change the way that we connect with and communicate with our customers. Having your business ready for it can prove to be an efficient method to improve customer relationship management.
