The Power of Voice Search Marketing

A few weeks ago, someone figured out how to get Siri to sing Bohemian Rhapsody to them and the internet went mad! Never one to trust the internet with things like this, a quick YouTube search was done and I was mildly impressed. A bit of entertainment at least but evidence that voice search marketing is evolving.

Here you go if you missed it…

Amazon’s Alexa is the first commercially available home voice assistant which can be asked questions and complete tasks such as setting timers, playing specific songs and shopping online. The latter is the most exciting (not that being able to shout across the room for a bit of Kenny Rodgers isn’t) to advertisers. Now after seeing an ad on TV, in a magazine, or on your Facebook feed, we can just shout over “Hey Alexa, order me that new chocolate dessert from Domino’s”. By minimising the effort of going to a specific website or into a store, the customer journey is shortened and thus reducing the possibility that they may abandon the purchase along the way.

Talking of Domino’s, they are one company to already capitalise on the rise of voice search. Just take a look at their ordering options:

When using voice search as opposed to search engines, the format differs. Where we would previously search keywords on Google, we will ask a full question to Alexa, Siri or Cortana as it is a conversational tool. From an SEO point of view, we need to think how the user will be trying to find our sites.

Last year 20% of Google mobile searches were by voice and this is predicted to be at 50% by 2020. Most of these searches will be done via mobile devices so optimising for mobile is paramount. This goes beyond responsive design and means improve page load speeds and drop down menus where possible which can disrupt the user experience. Long-tail keywords should be included in targeting as voice search queries will be more extensive than their typed counterparts. Featured snippets will also become more important as voice search devices read the source and snippet aloud for the user. By optimising for voice search, this will also improve your overall SEO so look at it like an expansion or upgrade to your existing strategy.

The future of voice search

As more companies compete with Amazon, releasing more advanced personal assistant devices, expect to see the quality rapidly improve. As the voice recognition technology becomes more accurate the usage will grow. Especially in situations where looking at a screen or typing is inconvenient or a hazard such as driving, cooking or tending to children.

Voice search is not expected to replace current search methods any time soon as consumers still want to look at results. We predict that the next stage will be for personal assistant devices to project results onto a dedicated wall, screen or even a hologram to bridge the gap.