The Future of Voice Search and Its Impact on Healthcare Marketing

We live in an era of rapid technological innovation, where new advancements continually reshape industries and businesses. Navigating this evolving landscape involves understanding how these technologies work and harnessing their potential for positive impact.

The healthcare industry is no exception. As a dynamic and ever-changing field, it is deeply influenced by emerging technologies, which are driving transformative changes across the sector.

Technology is here to stay and yes, even in healthcare. One of the newest technological trends in healthcare is voice search. More and more people are seeking the convenience that voice search offers, especially when dealing with already complicated health issues.

Voice assistants and voice search queries are making their way into healthcare and are slowly cementing a permanent place within the industry. As you’re already fighting to survive in an increasingly competitive and saturated marketplace, you owe it to your practice’s success to look into how voice search fits into the healthcare industry and how you can optimize your practice’s website to reach even more of your target audience.

Understanding Voice Search Technology in 2024

Voice search technology has become increasingly popular over the years – but what is it exactly and what is its current state in the year 2024?

Voice search is a modern technology that enables users to conduct online searches through voice and spoken language instead of the traditional typing method to input queries. It uses technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), automatic speech recognition (ASR), and natural language processing (NLP) to transcribe audio and spoken words into text queries.

Voice search operates through virtual assistants or specialized software integrated into devices like smartphones, smart speakers, and platforms such as Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. These technologies enable users to perform searches simply by speaking.

When a user speaks into a device, the voice assistant captures the audio and uses speech recognition software to convert it into written text. This software is designed to recognize and mimic human speech patterns accurately.

Once the speech is analyzed, the voice assistant retrieves the most relevant information and delivers it to the user as a spoken response, completing the seamless voice search process.

The technology of voice search has gotten quite big in 2024. Here are some voice search statistics to put it into perspective:

• Over 50% of the world’s population will use voice search every day in 2024.
• In 2024 alone, about 8 billion digital voice assistants are currently in use.
• In the US alone, about 62% of Americans 18 years of age or older use their smartphones and devices to access and use a voice assistant.
• Worldwide sales of smart speakers are expected to exceed $30 billion in 2024.
• It is projected that by 2025, about 75% of households will own smart speakers capable of voice search.

Voice search vs traditional search

Both the traditional search and voice search methods present searchers with relevant information on their queries. But there is a key difference in how these searches work and understanding this is key to optimizing your marketing strategies to work with voice search as well.

The traditional search method involves searchers typing specific keywords into a search engine. The results they get are relevant web pages, all relying on relevant keywords and SEO (search engine optimization) strategies. Such strategies in place help business websites rank higher in SERPs (search engine result pages).

On the other hand, voice search uses a more conversational and context-based approach in inputting queries into search engines. There is often a difference in how questions and queries are structured. If the traditional search method often uses only specific keywords in the search engine, voice search tends to use complete sentence questions.

For example, people tend to type “effective medication for cold” whereas voice search users will tend to ask “What are effective medications for cold?”. This shift tells us that voice search users tend to use more natural language and longer keywords.

Why People Love Voice Search

Voice search has been gaining steady popularity and preference over the last couple of years, especially in 2024. Its popularity is expected to reach even new heights in the coming years. Here are the reasons why people love voice search and why they are preferring it to get the information they need:

• Easy to access and immediate results

Voice searches provide an unrivaled ease of access to people who need to acquire a variety of information. All people will need is a smart speaker enabled to voice search and they can go ahead and look up any information they need.

Unlike the traditional search method, voice searches will not need searchers to sift through multiple websites to determine the kind of information relevant to their queries. Voice search provides instant and immediate results, provided in spoken responses. This immediately gives the searchers the information they need.

• Hands-free searches

Another huge selling point of voice searches and why so many are preferring them over the traditional search method is because it’s a hands-free experience. This is perfect for people always on the go. It allows people in hands-free situations – such as when they’re busy, driving, or cooking – to access quick answers to their queries.

• Conversational experience

Lastly, voice searches provide people with a conversational experience more than typing a search ever could. This is especially important for people who are looking for answers to the medical issues they’re experiencing. The feeling of having conversations may help ease their worries.

How Voice Search Is Changing Healthcare

Voice search is transforming industries, with healthcare leading the way.

One of the most impactful applications of this technology in healthcare is its role in driving local-based search. As patients increasingly use voice commands to find nearby providers and services, voice search is becoming a critical tool for enhancing accessibility and growing local healthcare visibility.

When users use voice search to look up information on medical practices, they often specify their location or specifically ask for results near their location. For example, a searcher might search “best allergist” using the traditional search method but a voice searcher will search for “best allergist near me” or ask the conversational question, “Who is the best allergist near me?”.

This opens up a door of endless opportunities for local businesses and practices hoping to increase foot traffic from their local community.

This also means business websites now have the responsibility to provide patients with the best answers, while making sure that their location and all other relevant business information (i.e. business hours and contact information) are clearly stated from their website so virtual assistants can easily extract and convey them to the searcher looking for answers.

Why Your Medical Practice Should Prioritize Voice Search Optimization

The importance of integrating and prioritizing voice search in your medical practice website cannot be understated. Optimizing your medical website for voice search presents a variety of benefits for your business and the quality of care you provide for your patients:

• Make information and your practice widely accessible and convenient

Integrating voice search into your practice makes healthcare information widely accessible and convenient. This allows your practice to reach a broader audience and increase patient reach.

Giving patients and audiences access to medical and health information without the need to physically type queries into search engines is particularly beneficial for patients with mobility issues, vision impairment, and other disabilities. When the traditional method of searching queries becomes too difficult for certain people, voice search can easily provide an alternative without sacrificing their access to information and the quality of information they have access to.

Additionally, many would agree that using voice search makes the query experience feel like talking to another person. This can make accessing medical information less intimidating. This is especially beneficial for the elderly, many of which would prefer the feeling of communicating with real-life people instead of computers and smart devices.

• Enhance patient experience and increase patient engagement

Voice search provides a hands-free opportunity for users to access important healthcare data and information. This enhances their overall patient journey and experiences. A positive experience in all the steps of their patient journey will increase satisfaction, encouraging patient loyalty in the long run.

Implementing voice search into your practice will also increase patient engagement. When patients have access to quick and accurate healthcare information, they are more likely to form and make sound decisions regarding their healthcare.

• Improve local SEO

Voice search presents an opportunity for medical practices to increase and improve their local SEO. Because voice searches are often location-specified, optimizing your practice for voice search will increase the likelihood of people in your local community finding and choosing your practice.

• Gain a competitive advantage

Even with its current popularity and traction, many medical practices are yet to fully embrace and implement voice search into their practices. Adopting the technology as early as now gives your practice a competitive edge over the rest of your competitors. You can demonstrate that your practice is up-to-date with the latest technology and is willing to make positive changes that can make healthcare more accessible to a broader audience than ever before.

Practical Ways to Optimize Your Medical Website for Voice Search

Now that we’ve gone into detail on the importance of voice search for the healthcare industry, let’s go over practical ways your medical practice can optimize your website to accommodate voice search:

• Understand user intent

Voice search queries differ greatly from traditional search queries. To fully and effectively optimize your medical practice website for voice search, understanding the user intent behind search queries is essential. Understanding the intent of a user asking specific queries will help your practice directly address the questions and needs of your audience. You can do this by researching and analyzing the common questions asked by your patients.

• Use natural language

Voice search is more conversational than the traditional search method. This means the language used mirrors natural spoken language patterns. Avoid overtechnical jargon and terms in the content published on your website. Instead, focus on using simple and easy-to-understand language. Provide answers directly and concisely.

• Shift focus to long-tail keywords

Voice search queries are often more specific than traditional search queries, therefore, they’re often longer too. Incorporate long-tail keywords into your website’s content and pages to mimic natural and longer-spoken queries. Keywords like “who, where, what, when, why, and how” are often included in voice search queries so make sure to include those throughout your website as well.

• Focus on local SEO

As we’ve emphasized above, voice search queries are often location-specified. Optimize your content by always including your location and location-specific keywords. This helps bring your business to the radar of your local community, encouraging and increasing foot traffic in the physician location of your practice.

• Implement schema markup

Help search engines like Google understand your website’s content better by implementing schema markup. When search engines understand a website’s content better, it can increase your chance of getting your medical practice website in the top results of voice search queries, increasing traffic to your website.

• Optimize featured snippets

Featured snippets are often the spoken results for voice searches. For this reason, you will want to optimize your website’s featured snippets so they provide clear and concise answers to the user’s search queries. Always aim for direct and clear answers to common medical questions, people might look up on the internet. When search engines see that your website provides effective answers, the more likely it is for your practice’s website to show at the top of results.

• Don’t forget mobile optimization

Most people who conduct voice searches do so via mobile devices. It would make much more sense to ensure that your practice website is optimized and mobile-friendly. Search engines like Google use a website’s mobile version to determine its ranking in SERPs. This is called mobile-first indexing .

• Create engaging, informative, and high-quality content

Focus on creating engaging, informative, and high-quality content to publish on your medical practice website. The content shouldn’t just exist for the sake of having published content, rather, they should address the needs and queries of your audience. Provide valuable healthcare information that can attract more of your target audience by providing answers to common health queries. This will help improve your rankings in voice search results.

• Test, monitor, and optimize

Voice search is a technology that can still be considered new and advancements are happening left and right. The voice search technology we know today will not be the same technology that it will be a year or so from now.

Optimizing your practice’s website for voice search is a continuous process. You must regularly monitor your website’s performance, optimize where needed, and test new implementations to see how they work for your audience. Additionally, stay updated on the latest trends and advancements in voice search technology to ensure that your practice stays up-to-date.

Conclusion: Voice Search Its Impact on Healthcare Marketing

Technology is a constantly advancing industry. The technology we know today will be significantly different to what it will be a year from now. Voice search is one of the newest advancements that is impacting many businesses in various industries, including those in healthcare.

As voice search allows users to access information conveniently and hands-free, it has become a much-preferred search method for many. This technology is changing healthcare, especially in terms of localized search. This helps medical practices with physical locations increase traffic and attract new patients.

In a saturated and competitive landscape like healthcare, medical practices must do everything they can to rise above the noise – and optimizing their medical website for voice search is one step closer to success.