MARKETING BLOG

Get Your Marketing Focused on Voice Search

Woman smiling at phone.
As technology changes, so does the way customers search online. Get familiar with how voice search has changed marketing for businesses.

Unless you’ve been ignoring online marketing, you should know your website needs to be optimized for mobile to compete in today’s digital market. As more and more users look for answers by searching the on their phones, iPads, and other devices, your marketing and advertising needs to cater to these specific searches. Not only does it benefit you to adopt this strategy, it’s detrimental if you don’t. Google’s newest ranking factors weigh being mobile friendly in a serious way.

Optimizing for Voice Search Vs. Traditional SEO

Users today are not only using mobile, they’re using voice search rather than traditional search methods. This changes the dynamic of your SEO strategy in a number of ways because people use their voice search in a more relaxed, conversational way than they might use a desktop search bar. For optimization, websites and advertising tools like Google AdWords find long-tail search terms often work better than competitive SEO terms you want to rank for.

A desktop user would often key in only words that were specific to their search, rather than entire phrases. For example, if you were searching on desktop for a place to eat sushi, you’d might type in “sushi near 32256.” Spoken searches tend to be more specific and are often carried out on the go. The same person on mobile search might say, “Where is the closest Sushi restaurant?”

The traditional SEO strategies grabbed users who were looking for the term, but it might give them a number of alternatives. Someone looking for “corned beef” for instance, might get articles on traditional dishes to celebrate St Patrick’s Day with a bevy of recipes. A voice search will often be something more concrete – “Siri, give me good recipes for corned beef and cabbage,” or “Cortana, when did corned beef and cabbage become the traditional St. Paddy’s Day meal?” If your website already provides the answers to these searchable phrases, you can adopt this alternative wording into your content strategy.

Are you Marketing for Voice Searches?

Optimizing your website and advertising strategy for voice search means you’re answering your audience’s questions in a smarter way. It’s not about hitting the keywords as much as building quality content around why a person would be searching for that topic, what your site offers that answers their questions, and how their problem can be solved through your platform.

As more changes emerge, keyword strategies will evolve over time. To keep up with your audience needs and attract new traffic, focus on the motive or intent of the reader’s visit and offer them value for their time. Contact us to learn more about how to adopt this type of strategy for your business’ online marketing.