Voice Search’s Impact on Digital Marketing

It’s hard to deny the increasing prevalence of voice search in everyday life. Everywhere we turn, there’s an Amazon Echo, a PC enabled with Cortana, or someone shouting, “Hey Siri” on their iPhone. Just a few years ago, voice functionality was in its infancy. It’s now becoming increasingly sophisticated. As devices with voice search stretch from the living room to smartphones and even laundry rooms, the way people look up information fundamentally changes.

18-49 year-olds perform more voice searches than older adults, using natural speech to ask questions to their devices, according to a Stone Temple study. With a variety of platforms including Apple’s Siri, Google Now, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana, virtual assistants are synonymous with current technology. Users leverage these assistants to dictate texts, control electronics in their home, play music, and perform searches.

With this increase in voice searches, digital marketers need to adapt to new queries, optimize for more advanced keywords, and create specialized content. Writing quality content is still paramount, but it’s more about instant answers than ever before. As devices grow smaller and platforms like Alexa find a place in our homes, it’s necessary to develop voice-focused campaigns to succeed.

Make Your Brand Accessible

To succeed in a new market where over 60% of people use voice search at home and 57.8% use voice search on their smartphones (according to the Stone Temple study), you must make your brand accessible. By optimizing your SEO and content toward voice, you can increase your organic and paid rankings for voice-based search queries. Determine how people are searching for your brand through voice by using the Search Terms report in AdWords.

It’s possible your brand is discovered through mobile voice search via local-based queries more than text searches. By creating more query-driven content and focusing on local ads, you can make your brand more accessible for voice searches. Creating more content that replies to questions can help your brand rank in answer boxes, improving its visibility.

By optimizing your brand’s assets for voice search, including mobile and local voice, you’re making your company available to a wider swath of people. Whether people are searching via an Amazon Alexa device or using Siri, they’ll be likelier to find and purchase your products or services.

How Does Voice Search Impact SEO and Keywords?

It might seem obvious, but people search differently using voice than when they type in a query. It’s necessary to consider voice search optimization to capture keyword market share. While SEO analysts often optimize for short-tail keywords that average two words, SEO for voice search requires a more nuanced approach. Using conversational long-tail keywords can boost your SEO, especially when they’re closely related to the product you’re selling. When people search for particular keywords, they’re also usually closer to buying something. Most people search in a longer, more natural fashion by voice, using speech-like search terms, often in the form of questions: Who? What? Where? When?

You may want to consider developing specific landing pages and ad copy for voice-based queries. Decisions are made more quickly over voice search, shortening the buyer’s journey, compressing it into a process that often takes less than a minute. Ensuring that your site can meet the demands of voice search SEO will enable it to adapt as mobile devices capture additional market share and virtual assistants become ubiquitous. Developing a strategy for voice search marketing will help you prepare as the market continues to grow.

The Future of Voice Search with Consumers

Within the next few years, voice search marketing will become a necessity for SEO, as more consumers use voice-enabled devices for search. With devices that run Windows 10, macOS, Android, and iOS all including virtual assistants, it’s easier than ever to search online by talking to your device. Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, and other dedicated home speakers make voice-based queries accessible at any time. With quicker answers, consumers act faster, making decisions and buying within a shorter timeframe. Whether it’s ordering food, buying clothing, renting a car, or another activity, voice search makes purchases almost instantaneous.

Ads can become even more personalized with voice-based queries learning your buying habits from multiple smart devices, like your refrigerator, washing machine, thermostat, and more. As every device in the home becomes capable of always listening and allowing you to search and purchase, marketers can utilize this information to target consumers more accurately. Machine learning algorithms allow these assistants to get better based on user feedback and behavior. Through voice search optimization, Google, Amazon, and Apple will be able to work with companies to serve up better ads to customers.

Is your company interested in being a pioneer in voice search marketing? Leverage Marketing has the SEO skills to help you get optimized. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help your company keep up.