February 25, 2021

Voice Tech SEO Expert at KISS PR Marketing Agnes Zang Explains Voice Tech - How to add Voice Tech to SEO.

Voice technology has recently taken off with a rise in sales of smart speakers and voice search. However, what exactly is voice tech, and where will it lead?

Over the past decade, several large tech companies have invested in developing voice assistants of their own. These include Amazon, Alexa Assistant, Apple with Siri, Samsung with Bixby, and Google with Google Assistant. There are others like Cortana for Microsoft and even one by Huawei. This investment in voice assistants is because voice is the future medium of interaction with technology.

What is Voice Tech?

Voice tech is any hardware or software that allows humans to interact with technology through the medium of voice. This includes smarts speakers, voice assistants, invocation names, natural language processing algorithms, voice recognition software, conversational UIs, etc.

Voice Tech is Rising

The penetration of this technology, particularly in US households, is increasing. Smart speaker penetration is predicted to rise to 55% of all households in the US by 2022. The Amazon Alexa enabled smart speaker, the Echo Dot, has also reached sales of over 100 million.

There may be several reasons for this increasing adoption. One is certainly the convenience of ordering tech to do something for you. Basic commands like Google searches, playing music, opening up emails, and even reading reminders are now pretty standard. However, major players in the Voice tech game are now investing in more complex algorithms and commands.

For example, Google’s Duplex reveal has now become the stuff of legends. Amazon has also partnered with several brands like Citi Entertainment, Dominos, and Starbucks for their smart speakers' specific commands. All in all, the convenience and the accessibility that voice tech provides are appealing to most customers.

How to Add Voice Tech to SEO

Learning how to optimize a web page or content for voice search is crucial for businesses aiming to get more brand visibility and traffic. To rank on top of the search results when someone uses voice technology to search for something on the web, keep these simple tips in mind:

1. Optimize your webpage or content for mobile - Find out if your website is mobile-friendly by running a Google Mobile-Friendly test. If there are some problems, Google will give you pointers on how to fix them. For a step-by-step guide on how you can optimize your website for mobile, you may check the article "5 Tips to Optimize a Website for Mobile Devices".

2. Optimize long-tail keywords - Voice searches sound like this - "Hey, Google, where can I find the nearest gasoline station?" or "Siri, give me the list of the top digital marketing agencies near me." For these examples, you should optimize for the long tail keywords "nearest gasoline station" and "top digital marketing agencies near me."

3. Make your content conversational - When producing content for voice SEO, keep it conversational. You can do this by using a Q&A format or by featuring a list of FAQs (frequently asked questions). You can also write dialogues or create them like you are just conversing with your target readers.

4. Improve your content's readability - This is very important as this affects how your content is shown in the search results. Using subheadlines, bullet points, and shorter paragraphs can make your content easier to read. Using structured data can also help search crawlers to understand your content easily.

5. List your business in Google My Business - For branded voice searches, getting your business listed in Google My Business can help a lot to improve your brand visibility in the SERPs (search engine result pages). For example, if someone does a voice search such as "Hey, Google, what time KISS PR opens?" - the voice assistant will pick up information from KISS PR's Google My Business page to answer the query and lists the company's Google My Business on top of the search results.

Read a more in-depth discussion about voice SEO here.

What is the Future of Voice Tech?

Even though voice assistant adoption is low right now than smartphone or smart device usage, it’s increasing. Google Assistant reports over 500 million monthly active users, while Siri reports 375 million. Even voice assistants considered subpar like Bixby and Cortana have users in the hundreds of millions. So it’s pretty clear that the adoption of voice tech will continue to rise. Whether voice will ever take over touch as the principal medium of tech interaction remains to be seen.