The world of voice search is still in its infancy, yet these new devices (read digital and voice assistants) and the use of search engines, according to ComScore, are expected to account for up to 50% of the global online search market in the next year.
This is a major change in consumer behavior that in a few years will revolutionize the way people search the internet.
The screen readers are becoming more and more present in our homes and more and more users are using them to research their mobile devices.
But what is the brand? A combination …play in voice search? How developed is the opportunity and what specific strategies must be applied to brands to benefit from this trend? Let’s take a look at the current state of affairs and, more importantly, where the market is heading in the coming years.
The Topic Of This Post
- The current focus on the zero position
- How the change will take place and how voice search will transform in the coming years
The current focus on the zero position
When you hear marketers talking about voice search, you will probably almost always hear about Position Zero, also known as a featured snippet.
The zero position is nothing more than the content that Google offers as the best position of the search results in the hope of responding directly to a request made by the user.
In desktop search, as well as on mobile, the featured snippet is then followed by several other search results.
In the world of voice search, the zero position is everything, because it is the only information that is transmitted to the user. As such, especially for businesses, getting to position zero with voice search has become the new imperative.
How to reach zero position with voice search, however, is still an open question.
As with all factors that revolve in the endless world of online search, best practices for optimizing zero position will evolve. But for companies looking to be one step ahead by leveraging screenless search, the new imperative is to focus on a few key areas:
Relevance through data: being the most relevant to a given voice search means giving the search engine what it needs to tailor the response to the user.
A user who, in this specific case, the voice assistant knows intimately. The greater the context offered, the greater the likelihood that a voice assistant will match a company with a potential customer. For example, if you run a restaurant, you need to ensure that the search engine can find accurate information on digital profiles not only with regards to location and times but also customer ratings and reviews, as well as additional information such as if the property is pet friendly, it is possible to offer dinner in the garden if the menu offers gluten-free dishes and more yet.
Feed the featured snippet: If we want to become the featured snippet of a given question, we need to make sure that the website and digital profiles provide complete and succinct answers to the questions that are most likely to lead people to our business. of the first paragraph of a post by a blog.
Define the priorities of Schema.org: this has always been the SEO but it is even more important for voice search. Let’s make sure the site follows an agreed structure on how search engines read content, as suggested by Schema.org.
While these foundations can help companies increase their relevance for voice search today, we’ve only seen the beginning of what voice search will mean for the implementation of future strategies digital marketing.
How the change will take place and how voice search will transform in the coming years
Despite the increase in the use of voice search, the business models that will evolve around this opportunity are still emerging. Right now, the world’s major technology players, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, are investing heavily in voice search for three reasons:
- Voice search is an underlying technology that can span multiple lines of business.
- It represents a transformed user experience that reduces friction and draws people away from screens.
- Voice search represents an important new way to tap into emerging markets like India and Southeast Asia, where devices and their usage are dominant.
Big tech is investing in voice search for the reasons mentioned above, but it’s not monetizing yet. This is all about to change and in the next couple of years, when it does, a new industry and community of suppliers will quickly spring up around what will be the new monetization models, just as we have seen with SEO and SEM in recent years.
The new realm will be that of voice search and voice advertising. Now is the time to test and learn, regardless of whether companies can reliably prove the ROI.
Every minute invested in a better understanding of the behaviors and opportunities emerging from voice search, particularly in regards to how the is consequently also … reference point of a brand is using voice search, it will bear fruit in a future dominated by voice.
There is no doubt that voice will rule the future of interactions with devices. The only question is whether that single company will emerge as a leader in this space in the next 24 months, or whether, as is often the insurance case, it will chase competitors. Could be… who, far-sighted, have begun to invest in unsuspecting times.
