The future of voice technology promises endless possibilities, and one thing is evident at the moment: voice search technology is gaining popularity among consumers with advanced voice assistant devices. Similarly, there is a driving need between companies to establish voice search strategies to add value to their digital marketing plans. This five-minute read covers everything from the state of the technology at the moment to how you can transform the way consumers search for and locate your brand.
Brands are finding more reasons to adopt voice strategies. The emerging technology will keep growing and changing the way optimization is done. Thus, establishing efficient strategies could earn you more traffic while improving your customer experience.
Voice Technology is More Than Just a Trend
Have you prepared your business for voice search? If you have, then you are among the few who deserve a round of applause. Devices that are search and voice-activated are disrupting conventional methods of search engine advertising. Unfortunately, about 62 percent of businesses have not optimized their sites for voice search.
The inception of the innovation can be traced back to the 1950s. But the last few years have been characterized by leaps and bounds that have facilitated the establishment of more sophisticated voice assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Echo.
Furthermore, this technology keeps improving, and the fact that customers get increasingly interested means that it is not going anywhere. For instance, Google has significantly improved their word recognition technology to over 90% from below 80%, so it is easier to use or interact with devices. With social media and smartphones becoming permanent fixtures in the digital world, voice search will soon grow to become an enduring part of life.
By choosing to remain visible to your customers in the next years, you will need to incorporate the technology into your marketing strategies. But how can you begin targeting the tool and boost your bottom line? Here are some of the most effective optimization practices to get the most out of voice search...
Research Voice Search Keywords
People speak and type differently, so you need to consider all semantic differences in search queries. For instance, an individual may type 'home voice assistant' in the search box, but a voice search could sound more accurate. Something like 'which is the most efficient home voice assistant?' Therefore, you must brainstorm on the questions relevant to the target keywords that may be asked. To get these, you can use query reports in Google and many other SEO-based tools in the industry to determine how people are searching with their voice.
Development of the Content and Structure of Your Site
When establishing a content strategy for this form of optimization, you should map the questions into different points of the customer journey. Here are some of the crucial points:
- Awareness: 'Which is the most reliable home voice assistant?'
- Interest: 'Is it possible to call someone with Google Home?'
- Evaluation: 'Between Google and Siri, who is more intelligent?'
- Purchase: 'How much will I pay for an Amazon Echo?'
- Customer support: 'What makes Google Home fail to respond some time?'
- Loyalty: 'Which products work seamlessly with Google Home?'
Once done, you can organize the questions into various categories mapping into the journey. Then, you will proceed to create content that satisfies informational intent (how-tos and guides), navigational intent (services, store location, press release, or customer service info), and transactional intent (product info, videos, product stories, or comparisons.)
Consider Creating Alexa Skills or Google Actions
You can allow more home assistant users to access your content by creating custom skills for Alexa and Actions on the Google App. These actions are software that further expand the abilities of the assistant to interact or work with your content since users can have conversations with your content or app back-and-forth. The action you choose has to be useful and optimized to suit the needs of voice assistant users.
Make it Mobile-Friendly
In recent years, updates on search algorithms have transformed this form of marketing into a 'mobile-first' environment. It may switch to prioritize voice-friendly results. However, the end result would not be surprising considering the current growth trajectory of voice search and its benefits. Notably, a majority of queries originate from mobile devices, so most of your voice search optimization activities are similarly useful for mobile-first optimization.
With this knowledge, you can incorporate these approaches into your optimization efforts. This will keep you prepared to attract new voice traffic as adoption grows.
