Does Adding Your Business to Voice Searches Matter? A Closer Look at Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant
With the growing use of voice-activated assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, many businesses wonder if they need to take special steps to ensure their business is optimized for voice search. Should you be investing in voice-specific SEO strategies, or are traditional SEO efforts still more effective?
In this article, we’ll explore whether adding your business to voice searches truly makes a difference and why, ultimately, traditional SEO and accounting for misspellings may be far more important.
How Voice Search Actually Works
Before diving into whether voice search optimization matters, it’s crucial to understand how voice searches actually work. Voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant function primarily by converting spoken words into text. When a user asks, “Where’s the best cleaning service near me?” the voice assistant transcribes this speech into text and performs a traditional text-based query using a search engine.
Once the query is converted to text, the voice assistant fetches the results based on text-based SEO, not a specialized voice search optimization. In essence, voice search is just another way of inputting a query, and the search results returned are based on the same algorithms and ranking factors as a typical typed search.
Do You Need to Add Your Business to Voice Search?
There’s a common misconception that businesses need to “add” their information to Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant. In reality, there is no separate directory for voice search. These assistants rely on existing databases and search engines like Google, Bing, Apple Maps, and Yelp to source information about businesses.
For instance:
- Siri uses Apple Maps, Yelp, and Google results to answer queries.
- Alexa pulls data from Bing and Yelp.
- Google Assistant relies on the Google Search engine and Google My Business for local business information.
Thus, if your business is properly listed on Google My Business, Yelp, and Apple Maps, it’s already accessible to voice assistants. There’s no need for a separate “voice search optimization” process.
Why Traditional SEO Is More Important
Since voice assistants ultimately convert speech to text and return results based on traditional search engines, optimizing for traditional SEO is far more critical than focusing on voice-specific strategies. This includes:
- Creating high-quality, keyword-rich content that ranks well in Google.
- Optimizing local SEO, such as ensuring your Google My Business profile is up-to-date and complete.
- Building backlinks and maintaining good domain authority to improve organic rankings.
These traditional SEO tactics will help your business appear in both voice and text searches, as both search modes rely on the same search algorithms.
The Role of Misspellings and Voice Recognition Errors
One important aspect of voice search that’s often overlooked is the occurrence of automated misspellings due to speech-to-text transcription. Voice assistants don’t always accurately interpret what a user says, especially with accents, dialects, or unclear speech. This can lead to transcription errors, resulting in misspelled queries.
For example:
- A user might ask Siri for “O’s Precision Cleaning Service,” but Siri might interpret it as “Oh’s Precision Cleaning Service” or “Old’s Cleaning Service” due to how the speech is recognized.
- Similarly, a request for “restaurant cleaning services” might be interpreted as “resting cleaning services” if the speech is unclear.
This is why accounting for common misspellings in your SEO strategy is crucial. By ensuring that your content, meta tags, and business listings include variations and misspellings of your business name, services, and keywords, you can capture additional search traffic that may result from these voice transcription errors.
How Voice Search Can Affect SEO Results
While voice searches don’t require special optimization, there are a few factors that are unique to voice searches:
- Longer Queries: Voice search queries tend to be more conversational and longer than typed queries. For example, a user might say, “Where can I find a good cleaning service near me?” rather than typing “cleaning service near me.”
- Featured Snippets and Quick Answers: Voice assistants often pull results from featured snippets in search engines. Optimizing your content to answer common questions directly can help your business appear in these voice-based results.
However, it’s important to remember that these longer queries and snippets still fall under the realm of traditional SEO—there’s no need to treat them as a separate strategy.
Why You Don’t Need to Focus on Voice Search-Specific SEO
Ultimately, voice search is not a separate search engine. It’s simply a different way for users to interact with existing search engines like Google or Bing. Because voice search relies on the same indexing, ranking, and crawling mechanisms as traditional search, businesses should focus on what works for both.
The key reasons why traditional SEO remains more important:
- Search Algorithms Are the Same: Whether a query is typed or spoken, the search engine uses the same ranking factors to determine which results to show.
- Voice Search Converts to Text: Since voice queries are automatically transcribed into text queries, the search engine doesn’t differentiate between the two.
- Misspellings Matter: Speech-to-text transcription errors can cause misspelled queries, meaning accounting for potential errors in spelling (e.g., “Oh’s Precision Cleaning Service” instead of “O’s Precision Cleaning Service”) is critical for ensuring your business is discoverable in these instances.
Conclusion: Focus on Traditional SEO for Voice and Text Search Success
Voice search is rapidly growing, but it doesn’t require a special, separate SEO strategy. The key takeaway is that voice searches convert speech to text and run the query as if it were typed, making traditional SEO the most important factor for appearing in both voice and text searches.
By maintaining a strong local SEO presence, optimizing for long-tail keywords, and accounting for potential misspellings, you can ensure your business ranks well in voice searches—without needing to invest in voice-specific SEO strategies.
In 2024, businesses should continue to focus on the fundamentals of traditional SEO, including high-quality content, keyword optimization, and local search optimization, to stay competitive in both voice and text search results.