Well past the threshold of early adopters, voice search has proliferated devices to emerge as the mainstream technology – think Siri, Echo and Search by Voice. Voice search is a simple, quick and convenient way to browse the net, website or app, which speaks for its popularity.
Per Voice Labs, 33 million voice-enabled devices are in use. Google receives 20% of the queries via voice search, and the figure will touch 50% by 2020. According to Thrive Analytics, users across all age groups are using mobile personal assistants, not just tech-savvy youngsters.
Writing is on the wall for businesses that are yet to prepare for the voice search revolution. They are likely to loose their brand value, customer loyalty and market share to more prepared competitors. Here’s your crash course on how to make your brand voice-search-ready.
Local SEO is the king:
Most voice searches are local searches. People often voice search businesses for specific products and services with a ‘near me’ phrase. Your digital marketing should focus on getting high rankings on local search keywords to drive geo-specific traffic. To this end, do as follows.
• Ensure your contact details are accurate and consistent across all channels.
• Focus on creating engaging, informative, useful and keyword-rich content.
• Bombard your website with structured markup data.
• Getting back links from community websites, incorporating location-specific landing pages, and participation in social groups is also advisable to up the voice search inflow.
Long Tail Keywords Are In Demand:
People tend to be precise when typing keywords, but with voice search, the story is altogether different. Voice search is essentially a verbal conversation where long phrases are the norm. So, it makes sense to focus on long tail keywords, as opposed to conventional SEO where short keywords are prioritized. Prefer keywords in question form, as they’ll be voice searched often.
Be Sharp With Your Answers:
Search engines have a liking for short, sharp and precise answers. Reading long answers back to the voice searcher will take time, which is counter intuitive to the concept of voice searches. Even the searchers won’t like to listen to irrelevant details stretching across several minutes. The thumb rule for online branding for voice-readiness is to create simple and precise answers for your content. Prefer keeping them within 35 words or less for better engagement.
FAQs are Back with a Bang:
Marketers are increasingly revisiting Frequently Asked Question sections to be voice-search ready. The reason being, FAQ’s are tailor made for voice searches. For a search engine, indexing the FAQ content and relaying it back to the voice searcher is relatively easy and quick.
