You are here: Home / Blog / 2021 is the year of voice search optimization. Is your website ready?

2021 is the year of voice search optimization. Is your website ready?

By CJ Coolidge on Dec 12, 2020

Why is Voice Search One of the Hottest
Topics in the Digital Marketing Industry?

Why Should Businesses Prepare Their Website for Voice Search?

Voice search's impact on SEO

Is Your Website Voice Search Ready?

 Think with Google reports about 27% of the Earth’s population to be harnessing the power of mobile voice search.

Back in 2013, the head of Google’s search engine rankings team Amit Singhal, while having a conversation with Guy Kawasaki, revealed, mark his words, “Google’s search engine is destined to become that Star Trek computer that we’ve been looking up to. And that’s what we are building now.”

And in the past few years, we’ve seen the tech giants take some bold steps to turn this into a reality, with some mind-blowing advancements in the field of Search & Natural Language Processing.

A recent Strategy Analytics Report indicates the global smart speaker sales number to be at an all-time high in 2019, with more than 147 million units sold worldwide.

That’s a gigantic 70% increase.

In the last few years, we’ve seen tech giants, namely Google, Amazon, Apple, invest billions of dollars in voice search technology.

With an ever-increasing number of people utilizing voice search on a daily basis and purchasing smart speakers, the question business owners, whether small or medium-sized ones or multi-national corporations, should ask themselves:

“Is my/our brand’s website voice-search ready?”

Victor Smushkevich, a Digital Marketing Guru, while sharing his thoughts on voice search, had this to say:

“In the digital world, I’ve seen multiple trends take over. In fact, I’ve helped various businesses with voice search optimization to meet each one of them. But I firmly believe that the evolution of voice search and use of virtual assistants and smart speakers is the most crucial one of them all.”

Voice search is revolutionizing the way people worldwide look up for and consume information on the World Wide Web.

And if your business doesn’t already have a voice search optimization strategy in place, then you are probably missing out on a lot.

Why has voice search gained such traction? And why should you care? Let’s have a look.

Why is Voice Search One of the Hottest
Topics in the Digital Marketing Industry?

While we are used to typing out our queries in the search engine bar, which obviously is the old-fashioned way of looking up for information, more and more people have started using voice search for the purpose.

According to a PwC Survey, out of 1,000 American consumers, nearly 90% of them claimed that they were familiar with voice-search technology and voice-enabled devices. 72% of the respondents were actively taking advantage of the voice search technology.

That being said, a few of the top reasons why people have fallen in love with voice-search technology include:

 

  • Makes their daily routine a lot easier
  • Helps them fetch the information they need quickly
  • Allows them to multitask with ease

Cooking your favorite dish for the first time in the kitchen and got your hands all covered in flour? Don’t worry! You can use voice search to look up the recipe.

Driving your car and want to immediately fetch that local business information? You can do that with voice search too.

With some mind-blowing benefits of voice search technology, all you need to do is use the words “OK, Google,” “Hey, Google,” “Alexa, play [your favorite song]” to start using voice search.

Why Should Businesses Prepare Their Website for Voice Search?

Let’s look at the top 4 reasons why voice search optimization is important for businesses: Helps reach out to more customers.

 

  • Helps Reach Out to More Customers
  • Predicted to take over in the near future
  • Helps brands deliver an outstanding customer experience
  • Impacts SEO

Helps Reach Out to More Customers

Multiple research pieces indicate that more than a billion voice searches occur in a month. And that’s a rough figure we’ve got here.

At Umbrella Local, we predict the number to be 5-10x times more than that, which is why businesses need to start giving voice search optimization a thought.

Like I told you before, voice search is gaining traction, with more and more people harnessing the power of voice search to consume information or get what they really want.

In a world where everyone uses voice search, if your website isn’t voice search ready, imagine the number of your prospects and already-existing customers you’ll be missing out on.

Predicted to Take Over in the Near Future

While the old-fashioned way of searching for information on search engines won’t ever go away, experts worldwide have claimed voice search to take over in the near future.

With the sales number of voice search devices hitting an all-time high, people have started enjoying having a conversation with their smart-speakers or virtual assistants.

Preparing your website for voice search will make your business future-proof and will also help you gain an edge over your competitors.

Helps Brands Deliver an Outstanding Customer Experience

Imagine your already-existing customers looking up for certain pieces of information and not being able to find it, only to later know that your website isn’t voice-search ready.

It’ll be insanely disappointing for them.

And as we all know:

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.”
– Micahel Lebouf

Delivering the best possible customer experience should be the #1 thing on your priority list. They don’t anymore want to pull out their phone, unlock it, launch a browser, type in www.google.com, type in their query, and wait for it to load.

Instead, what they really want is to have their hands on relevant information immediately. And that’s the reason voice search optimization is crucial.

Preparing your website for voice-search will help you deliver an outstanding customer experience, leading to high customer satisfaction.

Impacts SEO

Yes, voice search does impact SEO.

If you have been using voice search for quite some time, then you might already know that whenever a user conducts a voice search, the device he/she is using fetches information from a featured snippet, obviously if there’s one.

Here’s what a featured snippet looks like:

And upon creating and optimizing site pages, the one thing you should keep in mind is to make them featured-snippet-worthy. For that, you will have to structure the content such that you are easily answering the question your target audience has in mind.

Is Your Website Voice Search Ready?
If Not, Our Experts are Here to Help.

We are only a few months away from 2021. That’s the year we billions of people worldwide have been predicted to start using voice search.

And if you haven’t already given it a thought, it’s time you did now.

Umbrella Local’s world-class Voice Search Optimization Services will help you get your business voice-search ready effectively, helping you not only reach out to more customers but also generate more sales.

So, what are you waiting for?

Contact us TODAY!

Share This Article

Subscribe to our newsletter

Join thousands of marketing managers who get our best digital marketing insights, strategies and tips delivered straight to their inbox.

    How is your
    website's SEO?

    Use our free tool to get your score calculated in under 60 seconds.

      captcha

      Our Locations

      Alternative content for the map
      contact calling icon

      Ready to speak with a marketing expert? Give us a ring

      (646)440-1426

      google ratingfive star customer rating