What effect does Siri and the coming wave of voice-based search interfaces have

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   derek gulbransonposted 11 years ago

   What effect does Siri and the coming wave of voice-based search interfaces have on SEO strategy?
   
   It seems we can expect an increase in the number of searches formed by a human talking to a computer. How does this effect strategy for creating high-traffict content in and for the future?

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2. 59

   Savva Pelouposted 11 years ago

   At university I conducted a report showing the differences between an individual who searches via typing as oppose to speaking.  What I found was that when individuals spoke out their desired searches, search phrases tended to be much longer.  As a result of the elongated searches, test subjects found that they were receiving more specific results to their needs. 
   
   When longer search phrases are put through search engines, the "by chance websites" are filtered out ("by chance websites" was a phrase coined during my experiment and means the websites that pop up in a users results page that are not directly relevant to the search phrase but may have been picked up because the search term used was too ambiguous e.g. Car), and more relevant websites are brought to the front page.
   
   In the world of seo, websites tend to use short phrases as their keywords and in their adwords and the websites that were returned to the results page had in depth content and more often then not, small websites were trumping larger ones.
   
   To conclude, the seo strategy has changed when using adwords, longer phrases should be used to promote your site, and although longer phrases will not drive a lot of traffic, they will ensure that it will not be a wasted click.  However, websites must ensure their content is up to date and written for humans. 
   
   Last piece of info:  in some test subjects, we found that because they were using a mobile device on 3g, data was recorded showing users who had found the right website on the search page but due to loading speed they cancelled the request, returned to the results page to try another.  This showed that websites should optimise for mobile use and the most effective way is to use html 5 and css 3 as oppose to solely relying on javascript.

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      Vince Wicksposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It looks that the long tail is getting even longer. At this point (before active voice search) the best conversion falls on 4-word keywords (or phrases). It really seems that it'll change pretty soon.

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