Five years back, former Chief Scientist at Baidu, Andrew Ng, envisaged that by 2020, 50 percent of all searches will be through images or speech. This sign has been extensively altered in the tech press, as Ng was only referring to China, a country that presently accounts for 52 percent of global smart speaker development. Still, smart speaker and voice assistant procedure has continued to see healthy growth in the U.S. and other markets.

A survey, done in July 2019 from Voicebot found that about 60 percent of US adults say they have used voice search, and a broader international study by Microsoft Bing Ads found 72 percent of respondents utilized voice search through a digital assistant. These studies offer proof that customers are implementing voice for search.

Furthermore, if Amazon's simply declared Alexa-controlled glasses, rings, and earbuds get on, we could see a much bigger flow in voice search in the coming months.

This indicates brands that have spent a lot in SEO in the past should reconsider their search strategies. Specially, you have to know where voice assistants get their solutions from and how you can guarantee that any answers linked to your business are responded correctly.

You can employ three methods in a voice-first world to optimize your brand’s visibility and ensure it’s correctly represented. Have a look at them.

1. Voice SEO

After launching a voice query, a user gets the resulting content (voice-optimized web content) from a variety of sources. Usually, answers are drawn from web pages that mark conversationally written content, frequently using natural language modifiers with keywords, for example, questions beside short answers. If you would like to make answers that will be taken up by smart speakers, you have to be creating a “featured snippet” to give your content the best chance of coming out. Normally, content should intend to be in the top 10 of SERP on Google and Bing to be selected as an answer by voice assistants.

As there is a lot of inaccurate science being circulated about how to succeed voice SEO, it is best to begin with a landscape analysis to recognize what you are up against. In case of some industries and question types, dominant sites like Wikipedia might be tough to topple, however in many cases we’ve seen third-party sites with partial authority being surfaced over brands themselves. If this is happening with your brand, check your brand content is voice ready. It’s not a simple question of rewriting content to be voice-friendly; you should think through a number of customer investigation types that may emerge.

2. Voice experiences

In case you are making a voice application today, it would be good to include content and answers to questions you could anticipate your customers to ask. Though experiences are not surfaced through native voice search inquiries almost as frequently as optimized web content, Alexa and Google Assistant will still present them as suggestions for some queries. Moreover, both companies have squashed attributes that compose it easier for developers and brands to have their applications found out in this way (CanFufillIntent and Implicit Invocations, correspondingly).

Despite whether your experience surfaces each time a customer explores on a voice-first device or not, if you are endorsing your presence on voice and driving usage of your application(s), it’s vital to have answers simply available. Though, you have few number of users initially, the data you get from their queries and targets will be qualitatively precious, so you would like to use that data to update your larger voice SEO strategy.

3. Knowledge graph and database partnerships

Additionally you have to be watchful of is the ever-changing landscape of knowledge graphs and data partnerships which big tech companies are using with their voice assistant AIs. Two distinguished graphs that the assistants refer to regularly are Wikipedia and Yelp, as they are extremely trafficked sites where customers look for answers. If there’s information about your company on these sites, check everything is symbolized correctly.

Other secret partnerships will concentrate on filling knowledge gaps for the AIs in areas with agreed-upon realistic answers or that depend on consistent concurrent data. For instance, Amazon Alexa employs Wolfram Alpha to answer hard computational questions, and Samsung Bixby associates with the Score for sports scores and news. Furthermore, Alexas gets help from Yext on local search results.

Conclusion

As a large number of people utilize voice assistants, the major players in voice technology today for example Amazon and Google – and young voice technology companies that are on the horizon – will have their own ways of giving answers. Brands and other organizations should learn how each of those choices functions so that they can certify they’re being correctly symbolized.

While the process and sources may develop as the voice industry grows-up, the best practices are probably to stay the same. Brands can profit from updating their content and ecosystems to place themselves as a power in their category.