Voice, the Future of Search

Marketers, step up your game because voice search is gaining fame.

The “age of assistance” is already at our door, with marketing giants like Amazon and Google showing off their smart speakers in flashy demonstrations. Glitzy though these are, they proved to be very effective in converting people into followers of voice technology. So effective, in fact, that Forbes recently reported Amazon Echo and Google Home to have hit the 50 million installation mark; and is still expected to proliferate.

Source: Search Engine Land

“You wouldn’t want to go back to life without your Smart Speaker”. This is the highlight of a survey finding conducted by Edison Research. Humans can speak 150 versus type 40 words per minute on average; when complemented by the convenience of smart speakers being hands-free, it is no wonder that people are favouring the rise of personal assistant technology. There is little doubt that in the near future, the number of households utilising this innovation will flourish steadily.

So what does this imply to digital marketers? A simple one sentence: go with the flow. Meaning, if marketers wish to stay on trend and keep up with their customers’ ever-expanding demand, it is most practical to prepare their online presence for voice search optimisation.

Here are some essential tips lifted from Google’s Guidelines for any brand to optimise for voice search:

Content indicated by speakable structured data should have concise headlines and/or summaries that provide users with comprehensible and useful information.
If you include the top of the story in speakable structured data, we suggest that you rewrite the top of the story to break up information into individual sentences so that it reads more clearly for TTS.
For optimal audio user experiences, we recommend around 20-30 seconds of content per section of speakable structured data, or roughly two to three sentences.

The future of search is pointing towards the direction of using voice. While perhaps it is not ubiquitous in some countries compared to the USA or the UK, savvy marketers have recognised what this new order means to them and are moving to actualise their strategies quickly. Consumers’ demands for technological convenience are increasing rapidly, so we must do what we can to grow along with their pace.

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/08/02/amazon-echo-google-home-installed-base-hits-50-million-apple-has-6-market-share-report-says/#26ec89fe769c

http://observer.com/2017/06/alexa-google-home-edison-research/

https://searchengineland.com/how-visual-and-voice-search-are-revitalizing-the-role-of-seo-303958?utm_src=ml&utm_medium=textlink&utm_campaign=mlxpost

https://searchengineland.com/voice-search-and-seo-why-b2b-marketers-need-to-pay-attention-now-277459