“Hey, Alexa: how do I optimize for voice search marketing?” In case she’s not a professional marketer, I’m here to help with the answers to some of your most pressing voice search marketing FAQs. If you need to know what voice search is and why it’s important, check out this past blog post!
Optimizing for Voice Search Marketing
We are going to go over how to stay on top of voice search marketing, and how to continue to optimize your digital marketing strategy to take advantage of voice search.
Connection Between Featured Snippets and Voice Search
Take Google Home for example. When a user asks a question, Google Home cites any web content it provides in the answer by saying the name of the site. If you’ve optimized your snippets and been ranked in “position zero” by Google, your site will literally be the answer to searchers’ most burning questions about your product/service specialty, or area of expertise.
Pro Tip: Understanding what voice searchers are looking for (search query data) can clue us into what surfaces featured snippets. If you know the most common featured snippets are— and can provide the best, most relevant answer out there—you’re that much closer to “position zero”. If you’re not seeing the data you want on this, give Google feedback. It’s in their best interest to listen.
Learning New Optimization Techniques
When optimizing for voice search marketing, you’ll have to learn new things, but you don’t have to start from scratch. What do I mean? Well, the terms people use in voice searches are similar to what they are already looking for on their mobile device. The trick is knowing how those keywords look. Is it store hours, Bob’s Burgers Hours, or burger place near me?
According to Google, people are 30 times more likely to use action queries (go, buy, drive to, etc.) than typed searches (burgers near me). How you take action depends on how you understand and interpret the data (which is a familiar truth if you’ve been in the SEO game for a while).
Importance of Voice Search Marketing
The short answer: with virtually all the top dogs having a voice-enabled assistant/device, it’s very important to learn about voice search, and how we may be able to optimize for our brands.
The long answer: we know a lot of people use voice search, but we don’t have data as vast and sophisticated as what’s out there for text-based mobile search, simply because voice search is relatively new, and in-depth studies haven’t been done yet.
Of course, there’s no reason you can’t use the existing data—even if it’s just survey results and isolated articles—to plan proactively so that it is easier to optimize for voice search without a total revamp. Plus you can always give Google feedback and let them know what kind of reports and info you’d like to see— chances are, they’re already building that knowledge base.
Not to mention that if you’re already in the habit of analyzing data, doing keyword research, and optimizing your content across channels and devices, voice search is really just another opportunity to do that.
[Are you truly optimized for your ideal customer? Find out here.]
