Why SEO and Digital Marketing Need to Pay Attention to Voice Search

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by Rae Steinbach

Voice search is changing how the leading companies plan their digital marketing and SEO campaigns. Why is voice search so important to the future of growing a business? In short, it’s growing fast and becoming the first choice for mobile users. Here are a few reasons why you need to be paying attention to voice search.

Things to Watch in Voice Search for Digital Marketers and SEO Specialists

The best part of voice search is everyone from SaaS companies to eCommerce companies can benefit from its increasing influence. While luxury retail app development companies grabbed onto voice search early on, most digital marketing professionals are coming around to it now. There are a lot of things to love about voice search, but they will change the way you strategize and execute marketing plans. Here are a few things to watch. 

Smart Speakers Continue to Boom, So Get On Board

When Amazon announced the Echo devices, a huge appeal to early adopters of digital tech was voice search. Commercials now feature the “Hey Alexa” command as a primary function of the smart speakers. The same goes for Google Home, whose voice search features like vocal shopping lists and the like helped grow the device by over 400% in the last two years. 

As more homes utilize these smart devices, voice search is going to become a prominent element to user experience. Whether someone buys an Echo or Google Home for voice search is irrelevant; 71% of device owners use the speaker daily and will likely end up utilizing voice search at some capacity. Ensuring your business or service shows up in that voice search is essential to a solid footing in this growing market of consumers.

Smart Speakers Change Keyword Priorities

The appeal of a long-tail keyword used to be that you could grab users who had a specific inquiry. With the growing presence of voice search, long-tail keywords are the primary focus for users. Nobody is going to ask Siri to show them “frozen yogurt.” Yes, that might yield some nearby results, but they’re likely going to be more specific. When you consider the natural way we use voice search, it’s usually highly specific to our needs. For example, that dessert command over voice search is more likely to be “frozen yogurt in Los Angeles,” or “frozen yogurt near Athens, GA.” 

Place yourself in the shoes of a voice search user. Think about the long-tail keywords they’d be using and start to transition to more natural phrases people might use. Instead of the formality of typing an inquiry out, users now have the luxury of saying what they want. That said, they’re likely to keep things conversational and relaxed. That reality should dictate your SEO strategy for keywords. 

Keep Your Answers Simple and Straight to the Point

When writing content for voice search answers, don’t use this space to make a sales pitch or list features of your business or service. Instead, keep your answer optimized for users to get a simple and straightforward answer. Google or Alexa are going to prioritize the answers that directly connect a user’s request to a relevant answer. This approach directly targets the reason users take advantage of voice search in the first place. 

Anyone can google something to learn about a product or service. A voice search is a bit different. The desire of the user is not a deep dive into a subject or topic. Rather, they want a quick answer to their question or curiosity. With this in mind, make sure you’re giving them what they want. They’ll be able to find more information about your company in a typed search. This space is for simple, straightforward connections between the user and what you offer.

Voice Search is Here. Are you Ready?

It’s great to talk about the prospects of voice search, but this isn’t some future technology to think about implementing. Voice search is here and it’s ready to help you make more meaningful connections with consumers. Be ready for it and start looking at ways it could change your digital marketing and SEO strategies.