By
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Nov 19, 2021
Did you know that by 2022, 55% of households in America are expected to own smart speaker devices, and 34% of consumers who don’t have a voice assistant yet are interested in buying one?
Without a doubt, the number of people using smart speakers is growing by the day. We believe that many individuals out there don’t just treat smart speakers as mere devices, but as a part of their lifestyle.
Voice assistants make mundane tasks incredibly convenient, from making calls and scheduling appointments to answering your questions. So, we can easily see why it’s soon going to become an essential part of everybody’s lives.
The people who use smart speakers and voice assistants on their phones are huge markets you can tap into if your website design in West Palm Beach can accommodate voice search.
So, if you haven’t optimized your website and its content for voice search, now is the best time to get started.
If you aren't quite convinced that voice search is going to be the future of search, here are some trends and predictions to ponder on:
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58% of consumers use voice search to find local products and services.
This tells us that a lot of people use voice search to help them research and locate local businesses nearby.
And, with 5G networks becoming widely available across the world and smart speakers becoming one of the top-selling consumer electronic products, we can conclude that the number of voice search users will grow even more in the following years.
This presents a wonderful opportunity for local business owners to reach more customers and make more sales. However, you must optimize your website design in West Palm Beach for voice search to help your business get found.
Voice assistants are reliable and very knowledgeable in many things, but they can only answer queries they’ve been programmed to learn.
The way voice search works for local searches is that they can only generate results from trusted sources and local SEO-optimized voice search entries.
So, how can you increase your chances of appearing for voice search?
Here are some easy tips you can follow:
In 2020, about 87.7 million Americans already own a smart speaker. Today, that number has reached a whopping 111.8 million people.
Studies show that when they were first introduced in the market people used them to ask funny questions, but that’s no longer the case. Present day, the use of voice assistants has now evolved to helping people do everyday activities, such as playing music (85%), searching online (72%), and asking about the weather (74%).
This indicates two things: Smart speakers have gone from a novelty to an ever-present part of people’s daily lives, and that we are slowly becoming accustomed to interacting with Siri, Cortana, Hey Google, and other voice-activated tools.
Other studies reveal that as early as 2016, 41% of adults are already using voice search at least once a day. In 2019, that percentage has increased to 65%. Fast forward to 2021, we can see smart speaker owners using voice assistance multiple times a day.
As smart speaker sales continue to boom, we can expect that voice search will soon become the new normal. This means it’s time for you to optimize for voice search too!
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Although smart speakers help increase the number of people who search for voice, the real main driver for voice search is mobile devices. That’s because most voice searches are made when people are using their smartphones.
We can see why!
With voice search, you don’t have to park your car on the side to search for a place to eat or type while you drive. All you have to do is to ask Siri to find the closest place you can get gluten-free goods and it’ll lead you to the quickest route! Super convenient, huh?
Whether it’s finding a place to eat, calling a friend, or booking a flight, you can do almost everything and anything on the go through your voice assistant.
In case you didn’t know, Google expanded the availability of its voice search to more countries. Thanks to advancements in speech recognition technology, voice search is now available in 119 languages.
With more than 6.378 billion people across the world owning a smartphone and voice search being widely available in different languages, it won’t be long before everyone who owns a smartphone across the world can do a voice search. In short, voice search is growing!
If your company caters to clients from across the globe, it would be smart to optimize your website design in West Palm Beach, chatbots, and your content for voice search in multiple languages.
Having a personal assistant is something only celebrities and the rich can afford. But, advancements in voice technology have made it possible for anyone who has a smartphone or smart speaker to have a personal assistant.
The range of voice technology applications has grown into various industries, including gaming, healthcare, e-commerce, marketing, finance, and many more. In the business world, voice tech is being used to help streamline business processes and reduce cost by taking care of scheduling meetings, setting up reminders, task tracking, time management, etc.
The same is true for average people. Consumers use voice assistants to help them complete tasks, such as looking things up online, finding directions, and set appointments quickly and more efficiently.
People love using voice because it’s convenient, faster than typing, and helps with efficiency.
Having a virtual assistant to make phone calls, send emails, and open apps on people’s behalf will indeed make life easier. Being able to look stuff up online in one command while you’re driving, cooking, or exercising also allows individuals to multitask in ways they never have before.
People are already using voice assistants to look stuff up online. By optimizing your website and its content for voice search, you can put your business in front of potential customers right when they need you.
People who use voice search are high-intent customers. This means that they’re looking to make a purchase sooner rather than later.
As a business owner, you want to figure out what people commonly ask when they’re looking for your products or services and their intent. However, you should keep in mind that voice search is completely different from the text in the sense that it tends to use longer, more conversational, and specific terms. It also usually includes the phrase “near me”.
For example, instead of typing “coffee near me”, when using voice, you probably tend to say something like “Hey Siri, are there any coffee shops around here?”
Target voice searches by optimizing your content for long-tail keywords.
Remember, even if there’s never a guarantee that every voice search customer will buy from you, your presence in your target audience’s search results is still important for brand awareness and an essential part of the customer experience.
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Optimizing your website and its content for voice search not only drives traffic to your site, but also sales!
In fact, studies have shown that one in nine people who own a smart speaker make purchases via voice search at least once a month. So, aside from brand awareness, optimizing for voice search will definitely help drive more profit for your business.
Optimizing your website for voice search can increase your chances of ranking on top for voice search. To do this, you need to find out what actionable keywords your target audience uses when they make a voice inquiry online. Once you've figured it out, put them in your website's schema markup or code. This gives your website the ability to provide search engines with more information, which will be crucial for specific searches your potential customers will make.
When conducting a text-based search, people usually type in generic terms. However, to optimize for voice search, you must use keywords that your target audience would likely say.
For example, instead of using “hair cut”, use something that a voice search user would say, such as “Where can I find a salon near me?”
To optimize for search, focus on using conversational keywords, build pages that answer FAQs, localize your content, and use more conversational language.
Since there are no specific design standards for voice search, simply design your pages and optimize their content for mobile.
Featured snippets are short excerpts from a webpage that appear at the top of Google’s search results. They’re there to answer a user’s question quickly. If you want to rank for voice search, optimize your content for featured snippets.
As more and more people buy smart speakers and become accustomed to using voice-activated tools to make their lives easier, we can expect voice search to boom in the following years.
The ongoing shift favoring voice search is also a sign that you should optimize your website design in West Palm Beach and its content for voice search. Failing to do so can leave you lagging behind your competitors.
At Digital Resource, we can design a bespoke website for your business that's not only optimized for text-based search, but also for voice search! Plus, we can improve your content to make sure it ranks highs for voice queries and handle your local listings for better visibility in local voice searches.
Contact us today to start generating more leads and sales through voice search!
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