Easiness or Laziness At Knowledge?

Change is a necessity inherent in human beings. The world is changed all the time from the beginning to now and it will continue until the end of the world. In this process, humanity has always sought the easiest, fastest and safest way to obtain information and achieve success. At first we started to write books to convey information, then we created a library with those books, and when the internet was invented, we moved the library to the internet. However, we created a competitive environment. We have gained advantages in the virtual competition environment with constantly developing search engine optimizations. This learning and development behavior never ceased. The inventors have constantly worked to find out how they can improve the quality of the internet search system to make users’ lives easier and more satisfied. After years of technological advances, they finally realized that we don’t need our fingers to make a search. They called this system voice search. Whereas, did we really want to access information quickly or is it just to move our fingers less?

The Voice Search

The voice search is mostly used on apps, phones, websites, securities, and many other things. The voice search is also called voice-enabled this means that we could activate our voice search with that we can just search for something with our voice without even typing something.  Voice search works by connecting speech recognition to complex natural language processing (NLP) systems. These systems do not verify what the individual is looking for. NLP is a system studied by artificial intelligence to fully understand the text. For example, a voice search on Google Maps can be a perfect match for this search method. The reason for that we can just say something on the road google maps can show which road we should take before the voice search users had to use typing and using the car while typic is kinda dangerous but it is not if you are an adrenaline addict.

 

The History of Voice Search

In 2010 the voice search era started with the introduction of IBM’s new technological device called Watson. This device started the all-new area it was a revolutionary device which started to impact all the world after it released, everyone in the world who was interested in this technology was surprised that how they pulled this out. “Watson is a powerful voice recognition question-answer computer system that stunned the world as a super-intelligent, thinking, and speaking robot that was able to beat Trivia grandmasters on the TV quiz show, ‘Jeopardy’.”(1) Roy Castleman said this as a fact. One year after the invention of Watson by IBM, all the companies interested in this technology they did start adding the voice recognition system to their technologies. In the beginning, Google added a voice search called Google Assistant option to google search. The other companies like Apple followed Google and they started adding the voice recognition or search to their apps and many other things. For example, Apple did release the iPhone 4S with Siri. Siri is voice recognition and voice search technology with Siri the users of the iPhone 4S did have the advantage to reach whatever they want for example Siri can call, take notes, search something on the internet-only with voice. To give order to Siri, users only have to just say “Hey Siri”. Expect for those companies and voice search technologies that I mentioned in this paper there are other examples for voice search like, Microsoft “Cortona”, Samsung “Bixby”, Amazon “Alexa”.

 

Today’s Voice Search

10 years after Watson’s release the voice search technology reaches some point that even inventors of Watson wouldn’t expect that this much improvement. With these improvements and the point scientists reached with this technology, used fields of voice search became uncountable. Every area in management, schools, medical, commercials, to do the shopping and many other things. There is statics that shows the usage of voice search on shopping in 2020.

  • 43% of voice-enabled device owners use the technology to shop.
  • 51% of people who shop via voice use it to research products.
  • Nearly 5.5 million US adults make purchases with their smart speakers on a regular basis.
  • 28% of people go on to call the business they voice search for.
  • 52% of people who search by voice are interested in receiving info about deals, sales, and promotions from brands. “2”

 

 

SEO & Voice Search

In the midst of the voice search revolution, do you think we are ready for this war?

Today, 41% of adults and 55% of teenagers use voice search every day. Looking at these statistics, we can say for sure that we are in the voice search cycle. Searching behavior changes with the increasing use of voice assistants. Users now make calls by chatting with assistants. This interaction, which we could see as a scene from movies, is now becoming a part of our lives. So are we ready for voice search optimization?

Voice search optimization strategies;

1-Speed

One of the biggest reasons for using voice search is that it reaches search results quickly. Voice search takes the speed of the website very seriously and fast websites take priority for voice calls. Optimizing images, files, zombie pages in the site and providing good content for the user It will increase your voice search rank.

2-Content

Make sure that the content you share on your page is user-friendly. Voice search uses a semantic structure, so attention should be paid to the use of tail keywords. Also, pay attention to whether the content is sufficient for the user. The important point is whether your content can serve the questions asked in the form of a question pattern. 72% of voice searches contain queries containing question patterns. For this reason, be sure to include short and concise answers in your content.

3-FAQ

FAQ page is indispensable for voice search optimization. Voice search assistants prefer to give the user 30-word answers. For this reason, this technology gets the answers that users want to answer the question they are looking for, from the FAQ page. FAQ pages are quite fast and easy to understand for voice search technology.

4- Featured Snippet

Results of 40.7% of voice searches come from snippets. We’ve just seen voice assistants looking for 30-word answers. That’s why the  snippets is favorite of voice searches. Therefore, if you do not participate in featured snippets, you will be invisible to assistants.

5- Compatibility with Mobile Devices

Most of the voice searches are made via mobiles. The more compatibility between mobiles and websites means a huge advantage over the incompatibility is between them.

6- Business Local Information(NAP)

If you have a business and you want to be seen in voice searches you have to follow the NAP rules. Your business name, phone number, and location information should be seen on your website. When they are searching for a business with these rules and the things you add to your website will be an advantage over your competitors. Adding the when it is open and when is busy during the work will prove you to a favor toward customers because customer’s behavior always wants to get easy information and want to be guided.

7- Structured Data and Schema Markup

If you have structured data and schema markup as a website, search engines can understand you better. Therefore, you can be a good choice for the desired query in voice searches.

References

[1] Castleman, R. (2020). What impact will voice search have on SEO in 2020?. Retrieved 26 September 2020, from https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/01/03/voice-search-impact-seo-in-2020/

[2] Dean, B. (2018, February 28). Voice Search SEO Study: Results From 10k Voice Searches. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://backlinko.com/voice-search-seo-study

[3] Rauthan, H. (2019, August 16). Voice search : 7 ready-to-Use SEO strategies to rank better. SEMrush Blog. https://www.semrush.com/blog/voice-search-optimization-7-seo-strategies-to-rank-better/