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Benefits of Voice Search for Marketing

Voice search for martketing

Voice search, also known as voice-enabled search, is a simple speech recognition technology that is beginning to change the way people search for information online. Before now, many people spent time in libraries to conduct endless research, but the internet came and changed the way we access information.

With the increase in the use of mobile devices and the need to simplify the use of these devices as well as maximize all the opportunities that come with using mobile devices to search for information, voice search was birthed. Now keypads can take a back seat. Google voice search, iPhone Vlingo, ChaCha, are some of the voice search products people use.

According to a report released by Alpine.ai in January 2018, over one billion voice search is carried out every month. This is a new opportunity for any serious-minded local business to jump on quickly. Also by 2020, an estimate of 50% of all search queries will be carried out either by image or voice searches. And hopefully, by 2021, more than 8 billion devices will have digital assistants built-in, making it a lot easier for anyone to conduct search queries online.

For businesses and brands looking to remain relevant in this era, they need to take advantage of voice searching to improve online visibility as well as their marketing and sales goals. This can be achieved with the help of a reputable SEO agency. It also comes with many benefits for small or big businesses. Let’s find out how.

Become easy to reach

In 2014, Google released a report that shows that 31% to 43% of teens and adults used voice search to call someone and 38% to 40% of teens and adults used it to get directions. This is an opportunity for small businesses and brands to take advantage of.

Clients and prospects clients can place a call directly to the brand or business as well as get accurate directions to the location of the business. Using a telephone schema on the contact details of the business’ or brand’s website can help with this. Also, update the business details and contact information on Google My Business (a free business tool which helps the business remain digital). With this, anyone can call the company through Alexa and Google Home.

These two actions will make the business or brand rank higher in the voice search query results or featured snippets. Writing very conversational contents with possible long tail keywords that targeted audience are likely to ask, can help as well as writing a well-detailed FAQs on the website and getting clients to write reviews on the site too.

Increase brand recognition and loyal customers

When the content of a business website is well structured to suit the changing algorithms of search engines, it makes it easier for the search engine to understand what the site is about and properly position its content to relevant voice search query results or featured snippets on the Google Home. Voice search is different from the regular search method because it takes the form of questions starting with who, what, where, why, how, when (also known as the 5W and H). So people are going to ask longer questions (also known as long tail keywords) rather than the regular short keyword focused search they were used to.

If the website content of a brand or business is able to give relevant information about the possible 5W and H questions people are like to ask about the services or products a business offers, it would be more visible on voice search suggestions (which increases brand recognition because the more the business or brand is suggested to people, the more they get to know about it).

Now, turning these people to loyal customers would be determined by how satisfied they were about the information and service the business provided and most importantly how timely the business is able to get it done. For example, a user could say, “Where can I find the best hamburger in X Location”, the business that Google will suggest to this user is the business that fits the location, has relevant details about the kind of hamburgers they have and why each is best, as well as the relevant contact details, especially mobile numbers, a user can call to order or make further inquiries. If for some reasons the numbers are not going through, the user will go to the next suggestion. The more available businesses or brands are to users online, the more loyal they will be to the company or brand.

Opportunity to dominate local SEO

Voice search is mostly used when people are on the move, so they are more specific about the kind of information they want at that moment. What better way to reach more customers within the locality of the business than with voice search?

There are many more people living or working within the location of the business who don’t know such business exist or that there is a business closer to them that offers greater services or products than the ones they have been travelling miles away from their location to get. Asides that, new people moving into the location or just visiting a friend or family within that location won’t know about the business or brand. So when they make use of voice search to find the kind of services or products they need within that location they can away find the business or brand easily because it has properly optimised local SEO to its advantage.

Start by registering the business or brand on Google My Business (Google will need to confirm before storing this information), insert the business location map on the website with Google maps, register the business on any business online directory within the business location and supply business name, address, phone number accurately (and do this on the business website as well).

There are many other things businesses or brands can do to optimise local SEO. Dominating within the locality of the company opens the door to a new set of target audience closer to the business.