In this tech-driven era, the impacts of voice search touch on so many aspects of our day-to-day lives. It enables users to speak into any device, such as a smartphone, and utilise the power of the internet. It is so convenient and easy that it was easily adopted by people around the world.
But, it does not stop there. There are also impacts of voice search to digital marketing. In this article, we will explore the ways voice search has influenced most businesses' digital marketing strategies.
What is Voice Search?
Voice search is not entirely new. The way it works is that you do your query by speaking directly to your smart device then a voice search assistant carries out the following steps:
- Filter out background noise and concentrate on the voice query.
- Convert the voice search query from sound waves to digital data.
- Analyse the digital data.
- Link with external data sources to locate and provide relevant answers.
- Translate the relevant information to fulfil the searcher's intent.
- Recognise search patterns and compare them to the database.
What is the relevance of voice search in digital marketing?
Voice search statistics have shown exponential growth in recent years. Not surprising, considering that smart assistants like Apple’s Sire, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Home have become popular and widely used in everyone’s day-to-day life.
This level of adoption has a profound influence on digital marketing trends, particularly in search engine optimization (SEO). In fact, just a few years ago, voice search only represented a minute portion of the total number of searches worldwide. Now, essentially every thought leader in the realm of marketing is saying that we should take note of voice search optimization to utilise this technology to our advantage.
But, what is voice search optimization?
Basically, it involves optimising your pages to appear in voice searches. When you do this, you are essentially optimising the way people verbally search for information. Consequently, this gives your website the opportunity to be a source of information and be read aloud by voice search assistants to the end user.
How the Impacts of Voices Search Influence Digital Marketing?
With that said, let us dive into the major changes that voice search will bring to digital marketing. We listed below how the impacts of voice search marketing trends will influence your marketing strategies.
Focus More Featured Snippets
Whether you use Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, or Alexa, every person with a mobile device to date is familiar with how voice assistant provides answers to their questions. With that said, featured snippets are one of the notable impacts of voice search to digital marketing since it will receive more attention.
An example of this is simple queries such as the weather, upcoming international events, and holiday. For most smart assistants, they will provide feature snippet answers first.
Consequently, for digital marketers, the value and competition surrounding featured snippets will continue to grow. These provide an opportunity to gain more exposure through voice searches.
But, winning the spot to become a featured snippet cannot be achieved overnight. That is why it is important continuously produce and optimise content for voice search since this will increase your chances.
Increase the Value of Position Zero
Another one of the impacts of voice search to digital marketing is position zero. Much like featured snippets, its value will also increase.
Even beforehand, ranking at position zero is highly coveted. With good reason too, it can enhance your online visibility since most web users just look at the first few results when they search for something.
Moreover, gaining position zero can help you steal valuable traffic from the first search result. It is a win-win situation for you because you are both grabbing online visibility and traffic away from your competitors.
Prioritise the Semantics of Voice Search Queries
Placing greater emphasis on semantics is one of the impacts of voice search to digital marketing as well. While it is important to still stay true to your brand’s voice, voice search marketing examples show that adopting a conversational tone in your content is crucial as well.
When people use voice search, their queries are conversational—some marketers refer to this as “conversational search.” As such, instead of searching for “branding benefits,” their query will be, “What are the benefits of branding to my business?”
It is also worth noting that mobile searches containing phrases like "Do I need" have experienced significant growth in recent years. With that said, it is important to reconsider your content creation and optimisation strategies to directly answer these types of queries.
Maximise Artificial Intelligence
One of the impacts of voice search is also the way artificial intelligence is being utilised. An example of this is voice assistants, like Sir, Alexa, and Google Assistant. They use conversation AI technology to have a more natural conversation with people.
There are over one billion voice searches conducted each month which provides a wealth of data. Businesses and digital marketers use AI and machine learning to gather and analyse vast amounts of this data to gain actionable insights.
Underscore the Importance of Mobile-Friendly Websites
Having a mobile-friendly website is already considered a standard for any business. However, as one of the impacts of voice search, this will be further highlighted.
While desktops and voice-enabled speakers also have voice search, smartphones and other mobile devices remain the primary platforms. Not surprisingly, mobile devices make up more than half of the total internet traffic.
This emphasises that it is absolutely necessary for your business to make a website mobile-friendly and optimise it for voice search if you want to be more visible to web users. Moreover, neglecting to do this will decrease your chances of gaining potential customers.
Build Value of Local SEO
Local SEO is crucial for every brick-and-mortar store since this can enhance foot traffic and, ultimately, boost sales. This is one of the notable impacts of voice search since more than 50% of people use it to search for services and products provided by local businesses.
In fact, in just a week alone people use local voice search. This can span from finding a restaurant within their area, checking movie times, locating a specific service provider, and even navigating their immediate surroundings to get from point A to point B.
With that said, if your business relies on foot traffic, focusing on improving local SEDO and voice search SEO will definitely be more visible and bring more opportunities.
Encourage Micro-Moments
In the past couple of years, Google has been encouraging digital marketers to do more micro-moments.
But, what are micro-moments? Basically, they are instances when a person wants to know something, go somewhere, do something, or buy something.
With the widespread use of voice search, it is vital for your business to give more thought to micro-moments, how they shape conversational searches, and the content you provide in response to these. In fact, some companies base their strategies on their clients’ micro-moments.
When done right, micro-moments can be leveraged to effectively reach potential customers and essentially change how you market your products and services to your audience.
Final Thoughts
Voice search has undeniably reshaped the landscape of digital marketing. The impacts mentioned here just show that it is crucial for marketers to learn how to leverage this technology to stay ahead in the game.
Moreover, adding voice search to your strategies and embracing this transformative trend will be more beneficial for your business. It can help you recognise and understand the shifting behaviours of your target audience. Ultimately, leveraging this technology will provide you with more opportunities to connect with your audience in new and meaningful ways.
Optimise your website for voice search and get more conversions with Flexi Digital Marketing! Contact us now!
