Understanding Voice Search Algorithms: A Guide for Marketers

Right now, if your business is not focusing on voice search optimization, you are missing out on sales.

Voice search is increasingly becoming a large part of our daily lives. The number of voice assistants in use is expected to reach 8.4 billion units in 2024 from 4.2 billion units in 2020.

Marketers should take note of the trend as voice search algorithms impact SEO systems. Your marketing strategy needs to adapt and optimise accordingly.

In this blog, we will explore the details of the voice search algorithm for content marketers. It has insights into the changing SEO systems, new ranking factors and strategies to rank higher on voice search results.

How Does Voice Search Work?

Voice search adopts speech recognition technology letting users search using a voice command. Did you wonder how voice search works? Or how the algorithm shifts impact your brand’s visibility and marketing strategy?

While the underlying process of voice search is complex, a basic idea of how the voice search user interface works can help optimise brand SEO strategies.

Behind the Scenes: How Voice Search Works

1. Noise cancellation: It filters out the background noises and focuses on the user’s voice.
2. Converts sound into texts: It uses an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system to transform sound waves into text.
3. Interprets natural language: It uses a natural language processing model with artificial intelligence to analyse the human language.
4. Responds with answers: After interpretation, the device uses this information as a normal text search and surfaces relevant answers.

There will be a rapid increase in voice assistant usage. Marketers must adapt their SEO strategies for voice search algorithms and rank higher for voice search requests.

Voice Search is Changing Search Engine Algorithms

While typing a query, we use various abbreviations to get the results. But when we speak, we tend to phrase our queries differently. We treat voice assistants like real human beings and frame our questions conversationally. For instance:

Text Query: “Outfits Sunday brunch”

Voice Query: “Show me some Sunday brunch outfits”

As the user’s query style changes, marketers must alter their keyword research to optimise voice search results. It is needed to accommodate content resembling the natural language of users.

Factors like keyword density that were heavily based on text searches are no longer important. Instead, digital creators should adopt voice search intent in their brand content.

Here are some critical differences between voice search and text search queries. Market experts can use them to build effective SEO strategies for voice searches.

This fundamental shift impacts the content ranking algorithms. Thus, the keyword ranking factors change with more users asking questions to their digital assistants. Incorporating new factors into SEO strategies will help improve brand visibility.

Key Content Ranking Factors

To stay competitive and ensure brand visibility, marketing managers must focus on the new ranking factors.

1. Snippets

Voice assistants answer the user’s query in a conversation. Therefore, they read out the featured snippets from the top results. Search engines rank pages that have direct and concise snippets summarising their content.

2. Content Optimised for Mobiles

Most users prefer voice assistants when they are on the go. Therefore, they use them on phones or devices like smart speakers. Thus, content and websites optimised for multiple mobile devices rank higher on Search engine results pages (SERPs).

3. Conversational and Natural

Buyers use a conversational tone while using voice search which resembles natural language. Therefore, content that has the same tone and language is preferred being more relevant to the query.

4. Local SEO

Users tend to search more about area or locality-based information on voice searches. For example, ‘waterfall near me’ increased by 70% and ‘theatre near me’ increased by 40%^[1] in June 2024. Therefore, websites optimised for local SEO rank higher on these queries

5. Use Structured Data Markup

Users ask complex queries as they speak to the voice assistant. The voice search algorithm needs structured answers to find and provide simplified answers to them. Your content can provide a structured outline to the scrollers if you implement schema markup.

Top 3 Strategies to Optimise Content for Voice Search

Content optimised for voice search algorithms will be more fluid and conversational. That makes it easy for the device to scan and portray relevant information.

Let us discuss how to optimise new and already existing content.

1. Choose Different Keywords

• Long-tail Keywords

Now that you know buyers use conversational queries when using voice assistants go for long-tail keywords. They resemble how people talk. For example: ‘How to convert a doc to pdf online?’. A short tail keyword of the same question looks like ‘doc to pdf’. But users mostly don’t frame their queries that way in voice searches.

• Question keywords

Users randomly talk to their smart devices often asking interrogative questions. These include questions with 'what,’ ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘where,’ and ‘when. For example: 'When is the next budget discussion?' Incorporate such question-based keywords with conversation terms and include as many answers as possible.

GrowthJockey simplifies the process of keyword selection. They provide customised dashboards to help find keyword trends and monitor their performances.

2. Analyse the Best Results from Voice Search

Ask Google voice search queries and notice what Google SERP features are highlighted for the top results. Generally, the results will have featured snippets and suggested queries in the ‘people may ask’ section.

• Featured snippet

Featured snippets are the 2-3 lines under the result page link summarising the content. Update them in ways which answer the user’s query in short. Voice assistants use this to answer buyer’s queries.

• Suggested Queries

Read through all the questions in the ‘People also ask (PAA)’ section of Google SERP. Try to curate content for the unanswered questions on your website. Readers sometimes use the PAA section to frame their next queries.

3. Repurpose Your Existing Content

You have a lot of valuable content on the brand website planned according to text-based queries. Don't let them go as you can optimise and reuse them for voice searches.

First, you must run an analysis to filter out content relevant to current searches. Then, instead of adding entirely new content for long tail keywords you can optimise and add them to previous content.

Try to add content for featured snippets and implement schema markup as discussed before. This will help add to the quality of your refurbished content.

Final Thoughts

Marketing experts are on their toes revamping their SEO strategies. This is because more users prefer voice searches over typing their queries in search bars. It made their life easier as consumers and they could ask detailed questions easily.

Brands are expected to change SEO strategies to continue ranking higher on SERPs. They can do this by understanding users' intent and implementing long-tail keywords in their content.

At GrowthJockey, our digital marketing professionals are up to date with current voice search algorithms and trends. Book a call with us to get the best SEO strategies for voice search. We will analyse your present content, get customised dashboards to check content patterns and monitor your content performance.

FAQs

1. Are there any voice search optimization services?

Voice search optimization includes optimising SEO strategies and implementing them on the brand’s website and content. It is a part of digital marketing services.

Some organisations offer voice search optimization services like GrowthJockey. They take charge of your entire content marketing domain to upgrade and optimise it as per current trends.

2. How can I optimise the featured snippets for my content?

Optimised featured snippets enhance your ranking as well as help in building brand authority. These are some tricks to optimise featured snippets like

• Play around with the featured snippet structure (paragraph or listicle) and check what is performing well.
• Identify questions relevant to your content and then create snippets answering that directly.

3. What are the future trends in voice search?

Voice search will be the next big thing in the tech world. Some of the advancements underway are:

• Multi-turn conversations: Voice searches in future are capable of handling long complex conversations with buyers. They can lead non-shopping customers to shop for things.
• Personalisation: Voice assistants can understand individual user personalities. They can identify their unique vocabulary and voice patterns. Using them, voice search algorithms can create unique answers.

1. ‘waterfall near me’ increased by 70% and ‘theatre near me’ increased by 40% - Link ↑