Impact Of Voice Search On Affiliate Marketing

The Rise of Voice Technology

The introduction of IBM’s Watson in 2010 set the ball rolling for the innovation of voice technology devices. The following year, Google launched voice search and Apple released Siri – the first digital personal assistant. This was followed by Microsoft’s Cortana and Alexa powered Amazon Echo in 2014. Google Assistant and Google Home were launched in 2016.

This adoption of voice technology by technology giants brought about a massive growth in the usage of voice search.

The Revolution of Voice Search

Voice search was first introduced by Google in 2011 as a unique innovation to allow people to use their smartphones to make a Google query.

Flash forward to 2020 – more than 41% of adults are using voice search at least once per day. This growth in the usage of voice search has been led by advances in speech recognition technology.

Searching with voice is also convenient and 3.7x faster than typing.

These statistics are an affirmation of the fact that voice search is the future of online search. This legit trend is already affecting the affiliate marketing business in a big way.

Affiliate Marketing in the World of Voice Search

ComScore recently predicted that, by 2020, 50% of all online search queries will be voice-led.

Given this projection, affiliate marketers need to recognize the impact of voice search.

To be successful in the affiliate marketing industry and stay ahead of the competition, the website, blog and SEO & paid marketing strategies need to be optimized for voice search.

Voice Search And Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing your website for voice search is vital to your SEO success.

In 2013, Google’s core algorithm update – the Hummingbird – was unveiled that started giving more importance to semantic search. Semantic search shows search results based on the searcher’s intent and the contextual meaning of search terms. This resulted in affiliates creating quality and relevant content.
The rollout of the BERT update in 2019, took semantic search a step further with Natural language processing (NLP). With a better understanding of the tone and context of words in searches, NLP helps in showing more relevant results to the users.

These two core updates from Google are a clear indication of the fact that websites that are voice search optimized will be given more importance and ranked higher on SERP.

This is why it is important for affiliates to be ready and start optimizing their websites and content for voice search.

A voice search study undertaken by Backlinko, highlights 8 potential ranking factors for voice search results.

Page Speed: Page Speed will play a significant role in voice search SEO. Page speed, not to be confused with site speed, is the amount of time it takes to fully load a specific page of the website. It is determined by several factors like website server, page file size and image size.
Secure websites: Websites with HTTPS will dominate Google’s voice search results. Secure websites protect the information in three layers with encryption, data integrity and authentication. More than 40% of websites ranked on the first page of SERP are HTTPS websites.
Short & concise content: Preference will be given to short, concise and relevant answers to voice search queries. Content that’s simple and easy-to-read will be given priority.
Schema markup: Schema markup might not play a crucial role in voice search rankings. After its added to an online page, schema markup creates a rich snippet (an enhanced description) for the page which appears in search results.
Domain Rating: Authoritative domains will be given priority of non-authoritative domains. Among other factors, the domain authority of a website is affected most by the linking root domains, internal linking and the overall link profile.
Social engagement: Content with high levels of social engagement will do well in voice search. Likewise, websites that have better social engagement will rank better than websites that don’t.
Title tag optimization: Title tag optimization will not play an important role in voice search SEO. Instead, Google will find the nugget of information that it needs in the main content. This means that there is no need to write an article for every single keyword you want to rank on. Instead, create in-depth content that answers several different voice search queries on a single page.
Featured Snippet & desktop rank: Content that appears in a featured snippet or ranks highly on the desktop will rank on voice search too.

Voice Search And Content Strategy

To ensure that the content you create is voice search friendly, focus on using long-tail keywords and conversational phrases in it. This will help you better answer natural language questions.

However, before start creating content based on this strategy, it is important to do your research and understand which natural language keyword phrases are most likely to be used by your target audience.

A few other pointers should also be considered:

Keep the sentences and paragraphs short.
Update your content regularly to keep it fresh and relevant.
Mark up the questions in proper H2 headings.
Create content that’s simple and easy-to-understand.
Ensure that the content is mobile-friendly.
Use headings and ordered & unordered lists.
Use words that trigger featured snippets.
Add ‘also searched’ questions to your content.

Voice Search And Local SEO

Since 40% of all voice searches are local, optimizing your website for them is extremely important to attract more business from relevant local searches. Since almost 87% of people prefer Google over any other search engine, it is important to take complete ownership of your Google My Business listing.

Here are a few important pointers that should be taken care of:

Basic information like name, address, phone number, website URL and email address should be complete and accurate.
Location information should be consistent with your website and any other local business directories.
All relevant categories should be selected.
Use the introduction field to highlight your products and services.

Final Thoughts

With more and more people taking the plunge, affiliate marketing is becoming increasingly competitive and innovative. To stay ahead of the game, it is important for affiliates to be creative and embrace new trends like voice searches.

Voice search will significantly change how & where people search and how they get search results.