Marketing is one of the greatest evolutions if you really stop and look at marketing history. Actually, you don’t even have to really stop - it is so relevant in your everyday life that you are hyper-aware of the constant change. If you have been around for the last 20+ years, you have seen (or heard) it all. Print, radio, TV, digital, OTT & CTV (Digital Streaming), and now voice search. Is it the future of marketing?

Hey, Siri

Voice search seems to combine all levels of marketing that have ever existed into one, seamless avenue. Does anyone realize how big this is? Or how big it will get? If you don’t, here it is. It is estimated that by 2020, half, OR MORE, of ALL searches will be done through voice search. In case you didn’t realize, 2020 is less than 6 months away and half (or more) of all searches is A LOT of searches. You may start hearing “Hey, Siri...Alexa...Cortana…” a lot more than you are already used to.

While you are likely already used to voice search or have at least been present when someone has used voice search, you may be asking how this will work with your business. How can you take advantage of this enormous growth to benefit you and your business? Well, we’ve been screaming it for quite some time now but; SEO, SEO, SEO!!!! If you don’t already have an aggressive search engine optimization plan in place, now is the time to put one together. If you are optimizing your site but maybe not as much as you could be, now is the time to be better.

Optimizing Your Site for Voice Search

There are several ways that you can optimize your site for voice search. First and foremost, long-tail keywords need to become your best friend. How frustrating is it when you ask your device a question and a ridiculous search result generates? Long-tail keywords help prevent that, for example; “What is the best ice cream shop near me?” Instead of having to dumb down your question to, “Ice cream in X location”, you are able to ask conversational questions and actual helpful results will be generated (if your SEO is optimized, that is). So, all of that keyword stuffing, while helpful for your SEO, does hardly anything for your voice search results. Make your site relatable, conversational, and easy to understand and the internet will do a lot of the work for you.

Not only that but if your site isn’t mobile-friendly by now you need to seriously reevaluate what you’re really doing. If you are reading this blog, you are likely in need of some help with your web presence. Over half of all internet usage is done via a mobile device. If more than half of your users are on a mobile device and your site isn’t mobile-friendly, they’re going to drop off pretty quickly. Nothing is more frustrating than not being able to easily navigate a website because it isn’t optimized for mobile users. Want one way to tell your audience that you don’t care about them? Don’t make your site mobile friendly (just kidding, don’t do that, I was being sarcastic - if you didn’t pick up on my conversational tone).

Improving Local Business

If you are a local business looking to gain local customers, this will impact you greatly. Over half of the searches executed for a local business are done through voice search. Of this, over 75% of those users are conducting these voice searches weekly. That is a huge pool of people and searches that you could be missing out on if your site isn’t optimized for it. Consumers are much more likely to purchase from you if your site is mobile friendly as well so not only do you want to optimize to get them there through voice search but you also want to ensure the mobile-friendliness of the site.

Structured Data

Last but not least, structured data in the backend of your website is extremely important when it comes to voice search. The structured data is where your voice search results will mostly generate from and provide the user with an answer. Search engines will understand your data more and crawl your site better with this structured data.

So, looks like you may have a bit of work to do and it may seem a little overwhelming. Don’t fret, that’s what we’re here for! If you want to get ahead of the game and really dive in and benefit from all that voice search optimization can do you for, contact us today! We are here and ready to have your site voice search optimized and to help consumers find you every day.

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