Voice Search - How to Get your Brand Started

“Hey Siri, what is the future of voice search?”

Thousands of articles on Internet will tell you that voice search going to change the SEO, content strategy and so forth. It gets confusing and overwhelming. This article aims to clear all confusion by sharing some few ideas on how to get your brand started with voice search.

Importance of Voice Search

What started off as an experiment in 2001 by Google has made its way in the mainstream usage today. Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri and Google’s Google Voice Search are dominating the voice recognition space to the point where there are 1 billion voice searches per month (Source). This explains why voice search is so critical today.

Understand the Searcher’s Motive

Google’s Hummingbird algorithm considers the context of the query instead of individual keywords. It also aims at providing users with the most relevant search results (Specific webpage) rather than just the website homepage.

To figure out various intents, prepare a list of keywords relevant and tangential to your business or what you do. And club them with the most commonly used intents i.e. what, who, how, when and where. If we consider the marketing funnel, ‘what’ and ‘who’ are at the top of the funnel (TOFU), ‘how’ and ‘when’ are at the middle of the funnel MOFU and ‘where’ is at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU).

For example, a marketing CRM software brand might define marketing crm as a keyword. This gives us following intents:

• What is a marketing crm?
• How does a marketing crm work?

And so on.

Doing this groundwork will allow you to create content strategy that caters to the various intents.

Optimize for Local SEO

Do you know that mobile voice-related searches are 3X more likely to be local-based than text? Enlist your business on Google My Business, Bing Places for Business and relevant local portals and directories. Also, encourage your customers or visitors to leave rating and reviews on these platforms to help your searchers make the right decision.

Structure your website around queries such as NAP (Name, address, phone number), business timings or any query that answers the 4 W’s and 1 H questions regarding your business.

These tactics will make it easier for the users to find you. For instance, when a user searches for “Ok Google. where can I eat sushi near me”, your restaurant will be displayed under Google My Business listings and other portals.

Website Changes

To rank your website higher up in the search engine result pages (SERPs), make sure that you take care of the following aspects of your website:

• Mobile Friendly Website: Since voice search primarily happens on smartphones, it is mandatory to have a responsive website. A website that is optimized for a prime user experience will rank high in the SERPs. Use Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to evaluate your website.
   
• Page Load Speed: Users simply don’t have time for slow loading websites - get rid of anything that is detrimental to load speed of the webpage. Google’s PageSpeed Insights gives you an in depth analysis of your webpage and the tweaks or optimization it requires.

Content Strategy

Create content that answers specific user-based questions. Keep the persona analysis document handy to create a set of ideas to back your content. Another way is to conduct interviews with your prospects and customers to know about their pain points and what they are looking for. 

• Focus on Long Tail Keywords: Long tail keywords are more specific compared to a general keyword phrase. Users ask questions in a conversational manner when using voice search – here, long tail keywords work wonders.

For example, a user might type in something like “sushi restaurant san francisco” whereas when using voice search, the user might say “where can I eat sushi in san francisco” or “what are some sushi restaurants near me.” People using voice search tend to be more specific because they are looking for information on the go. They are not in research mode. Google Search Console will give you a list of keywords that people search for to land on your website. Utilize that list to come up with a list of long tail keywords.

• Create FAQ Styled Content: Since the voice search queries are conversational in tone, it is imperative to create content in a Q n A format. Also, many voice searches can be categorized in the ‘How-to’ themed queries. E.g. how do I speed up my computer, how to start a small business etc. Most of such queries are a goldmine of a great TOFU content i.e. you are helping users solve their most common day-to-day problems.

Therefore, create content around long tail keywords by converting keywords into questions. For instance, a Marketing CRM company might use a keyword like, email marketing to come up with following content ideas:

• How to get started with email marketing?
• How to grow your email list?
• How to personalize your email marketing efforts?

Although these queries will not help you generate sales immediately, there’s a high chance that when the users are looking for a solution, they’ll pick you.

It is predicted that 50% of the searches will be voice searches by 2020. Brands that start early in optimizing their marketing efforts to cater to voice search will have an edge over their competition.

What are your thoughts on voice search, its future and how do you plan to tweak your strategy? Let us know in the comments below!