Voice search smart assistants Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are making us rethink how we should do our SEO strategy

In a recent article published by TechiExpert, Amazon’s Alexa is changing how organic searches would appear in search engines. While SEO has been long dominated by Google Search, technological developments would inevitably change that—namely voice search.

While I myself use Samsung Bixby to start up my day, I didn’t think that my questions and requests would reflect my “consumer intent”. If you’re familiar with marketing strategies, you would know that SEO involves finding out what the customer wants by using the keywords they use to search on Google. And sometimes Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. But most businesses overlook that and we know why (honestly you shouldn’t).

What’s Voice Search Got to Do With It?

Customer intent is strongly emphasized based on the amount of searches on these engines. In line with that, Alexa is said to recommend a product or two after voice searches. While you may think that’s something that wouldn’t matter in a few years. You should consider looking at this data.

Blue Corona on Voice Search Marketing

Blue Corona, a premium digital marketing agency based in the United States, said that voice search is growing. Apparently, you and I are not alone. A lot of people had fun using Siri and Alexa which some people find it essential in their daily lives. As I’ve said, Alexa recommends a product or answers a query after a voice search. I would it imagine it would go like this: “Siri, are boba milk teas part of a keto diet”. Now, imagine you are a startup company for a “keto version” of boba milk tea, you can already sense buying intent from the customer. Wouldn’t it be nice if you’re company came up first in that search? Voice search makes that all possible.

It’s good to note that Amazon looks into more than just traffic and SEO strategies. They look into the best-selling products, too. This means it’s more than just clicks and keywords.

Why the Current SEO Strategy Just Isn’t Gonna Work

Simply put, writing and speaking are different. When you type something into Google, most of the time you’re already looking into buying something. But a conversation can just merely pose a question. “How much does a bottle of sauvignon wine cost?” would sound different on paper and on voice. The text search would expect a list of brands and price comparisons. The voice search would expect a response from a robotic voice merely telling the price. The same thing applies for SEO strategies.

Also, people wouldn’t type ‘how much does a bottle of sauvignon cost’. The keyword would mostly be ‘sauvignon wine price’ or ‘sauvignon best price’. That doesn’t sound human at all. Voice searches would transform into long-tail questions. The tone of the search would be more natural and conversational. This also means that your business, your website, and your content should sound more like that.

Artificial Intelligence for Voice Searches Looks Into Your Content

Just like how Amazon doesn’t care solely about your traffic, voice searches function using artificial intelligence that looks into the content. This means black hat SEO or exact match tactics that you and I know so well wouldn’t work as much. What they look into are fast homepages and websites, and related blogs about services incorporating the SEO strategy for voice search I stated above.

Voice search marketing also makes use of the featured snippets. Featured snippets are the bane of existence for organic traffic. These are the featured content found on top of the top 10 Google search results for specific queries. Basically, searches can be reduced to just one top content. And that makes Google even harder to rank into.

Nevertheless, this means your content should show more authority in a specific question. The good thing about these featured snippets is that there is reportedly higher conversion among customers. So, if we can make use of it. We should.

How Does Voice Search Work for SEO Strategies

While voice search is still a nascent concept for online marketing, your content could be optimized for voice search. These are some of the things you should consider when doing voice search marketing:

• Try a normal-sounding voice: And this one you sometimes forget. ‘Sauvignon best price’ doesn’t necessarily work grammatically in a sentence. In fact, it’s just chopped words used for search engine queries. Even ‘#1 Sauvignon best price’ won’t sound right in voice searches. So try sounding like a human for once when creating content.
• Use question phrases: Voice searches are mostly used for questions. “How much do Agatha Christie novels cost?” “What’s the weather today?” “How much does sauvignon cost?” You get my point.
• Long tail keywords are your friend now: And while the usual SEO puts this into the conversation. Most people don’t really take note of it. Voice searches would make use of this more as questions are mostly long tail.
• Focus on user intent: Think about what they want and how your content will match with it. ‘Emergency car locksmith services’ and ‘car locksmith services’ are vastly different by urgency and intent. If you’ve created multiple blogs about ‘getting locked out of your car’ and ‘locksmith tips and tricks’ then you’d most probably pop up in the first search. Remember, the AI looks into your content.
• Again, Optimize: While some marketers think voice search could be the death of SEO, current practices are still applicable in some ways. SEO would help you narrow down that intent into conversion. Still.
• Trust and transparency: Make sure your business profiles and contact information are filled in. That’s just another common thing people look for in voice search. Do you really open your business at 8 am? Make sure that’s accurate. Or you’ll be losing customers when Siri gives them your business number and you’re out of reach.
• Lastly, make sure your website ACTUALLY loads: Voice searches are fast. And when they search for a website, yours must get to work quickly. If not, then you should really do something about it.

Why You Should Consider Optimizing for Voice Search Marketing

At this point, you might be thinking, why does it matter to me? Well…

• 61% of users aged 21-64 said they would most likely use voice search in the future.
• 57% of teens also say they would most likely use voice search. By 2020, an estimated
• 50% of all searches would be done by voice search.

Again, some experts think that voice search marketing could be the end of SEO. I think otherwise. Online marketing and marketing strategies change over the years. There is an emerging channel for search intent with voice search. And should be considered with marketing strategies.

Voice Search for Future Marketing Strategies

The advent of voice search could put some marketing tricks at risk. But it also gives a clear picture of what customers really want. They want convenience. They want answers. And they want it fast. Nothing speaks louder as a concrete answer than the voice of the customers themselves.

Voice search should definitely be up your sleeve. It’s not gonna go away anytime soon as more and more people are getting into it. Voice search acts like a medium of instant answers. So if you’re going to optimize for voice, make sure speed is one of your priorities. According to data, the longer your website loads, the faster customers leave. If it takes 10 seconds to load, that customer is 123% gone.

Voice search marketing is just one aspect of digital marketing you can prepare for. Need extra help with other aspects like your social media and website? DotYeti has unlimited graphic design services to fulfill all your marketing and design needs. Sign up today and get started for as low as $449 a month!