Voice search
Answer:
What is voice search?
Simply put, it is a technology that allows users to perform internet searches by verbally asking a question on a smartphone, smart device or computer.
What is the difference between voice search and web search?
Voice search is conversational, natural, and consists of longer sentences. Comparatively speaking, traditional web search is short and basic.
The latter focuses on keywords e.g. "best <course title> degree", so search engines work out user intent and return results that the user can scroll through to pick their preferred one. Whereas voice search expects a clear question e.g. "where is the best <course title> degree near me?" and the closest, solitary, straight answer is provided.
Let's put this into perspective. For a traditional web search, we might rank in the top 1-20 search engine result returns, so we appear and drive traffic to our site. Now imagine there is only one result, selected by the search engine - that's voice search.
Next year, if your content is not optimised for voice search, you will not be part of 50 per cent of the searches carried out.
How we've addressed this
We have implemented a voice schema across the website, which has been validated by Google.
This allows us to identify specific content sections that can be used with audio devices that use Text To Speech (TTS). Our content can be widely ‘heard’ on devices such as Alexa and will benefit users with e.g. visual impairments.
Every web page is assumed to be a type of WebPage, so various properties such as breadcrumb may be used. Explicit declaration is required if these properties are specified, so if they are found outside of an item scope they will be assumed to be about the page.
Web pages consist of several parts:
- Banner
- Main content
- Navigation
- Related links etc.
We implemented the speakable schema (a subset of the WebPage schema) for devices that support this to identify the relevant content for TTS.
This allows us to select sections of a WebPage that are 'speakable' and appropriate for TTS conversion. Other sections of a page may also be spoken. The 'speakable' property serves to indicate the parts most likely to be useful for speech.
Guidance on how to optimise your content for voice search
You can improve your brand awareness and visitor UX by undertaking the below:
- Write content in a conversational tone
- Focus less on keywords
- Focus more on semantic search (use natural language)
- Identify user intent
- Create a of your main content above the fold using 40-50 characters (review your page Analytics to see what search queries you can use to generate your snippets)
- Add a whole question as a H2 sub header
- Include FAQs in your content
- Include longer tail keyword phrases to reach users
- A high proportion of voice searches will look for location-based content so
- Page load speed can affect your chances of appearing as the voice return, so make sure your images etc. are optimised.