Voice Search Is the Future (and the Present)

Did You Know? 75% of voice search results rank in the top 3 for that same query on desktop. (Source)

Happy Monday, Marketers!

I can’t remember the last time I used voice search. The only time I talk to my phone is when someone else is on the other side.

Clearly, I’m in the minority.

62% of Americans use some form of voice assistant with 50% of Americans using voice search daily as of 2024. 71% of Internet users prefer to use voice search instead of typing their queries the old fashioned way. And, unsurprisingly, voice search use is correlated with age.

Kids these days.

When we use voice search vs traditional search is highly situation-dependent, such as when we’re driving or what we’re looking for information about.

Turns out, “weather” is the most frequent voice search category.

I imagine some of those weather-related queries are lonely people trying to make conversation with Siri and Alexa.

I was pretty surprised to see that smartphones aren’t the runaway winner when it comes to the devices we use for voice search. Across most cuts of the data I looked at, smartphones are used only twice as much as computers or tablets for voice search queries. I really thought that would be like 4:1.

The 55+ demographic sticks to smartphones and computers for their voice searches while younger demographics incorporate more smart speaker queries, though this might say more about the likelihood of each age group to even own these devices.

In terms of digital assistants used, the market is pretty split with none of the four major companies owning more than 36% of the market.

Did anyone else have, like, no idea that those were the logos for each digital assistant?

How does voice search differ from traditional search?

For the sake of brevity (and because I feel no need to reinvent the wheel), I’ll answer that question with this table from Data Science Central, which I think does a great job of breaking down voice vs traditional, text-based search.

6 ways to optimize for voice search

Much to my chagrin, voice search isn’t going anywhere. Here are 6 ways you can optimize your content for our voice-powered world.

1. Build content around concise answers to FAQs

People don’t use voice search because they want an in-depth answer to complex subjects. They use if for quick, off-the-cuff, FAQ-style queries. Build your content to answer those queries and use Schema.org markup in your web page’s header to do it. As a bonus, it’ll also help your page land those FAQ rich results in the SERPs (even though Google is showing far fewer of them than they used to).

2. Optimize for featured snippets

Where do voice assistants actually get their responses to your queries? 40.7% of the time, they come from featured snippets, which already are structured for quick, concise, on-target responses. Here’s a very meta example of a featured snippet:

And here’s a good resource explaining how top optimize your content to win featured snippets.

tl;dr: Structure your content intentionally and provide concise, easy-to-parse answers (both for your visitors and for voice assistants).

3. Create conversational content around long-tail keywords

People tend to speak more fluidly than they type. As such, the average voice search query is 29 words long. I don’t know the average text-based query length, but it’s probably around 4-5 words.

With the rise of AI and LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT, voice assistants are able to understand complex queries using context and provide impressively accurate responses. More than ever, SEO is about topic relevance and not keyword stuffing.

If you want to more closely match the voice search queries people are using, shape your content around that conversational style.

4. Think mobile-first

Mobile-first development already is the norm in most industries, with 61.2% of all web traffic occurring on mobile devices, but an even higher percentage of voice search queries skew away from traditional desktop and laptop devices.

5. And that means prioritize page speed

A key component of thinking mobile-first is to use a lightweight, fast-loading design with a great UX.

6. Optimize for local search when possible

Mobile devices give us the ability to navigate our world with the Internet in our pocket. Because most voice searches occur in the moment on mobile devices that know our exact location, they’re especially good at providing location-based answers.

Everyone say, “Hi!” to Mark R 👋

Question: Would you rather be able to talk to animals (but they all complain about their day) or be able to speak every language (but only be able to talk about the weather)?

Mark R’s Answer: “I would rather be able to speak every language because at least that would be a cool party trick. If I could talk to animals people would think I am crazy.“

ChatGPT-Generated Joke of the Day 🤣

Why was the math book sad?

Because it had too many problems.

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