Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant: How to Deal With Voice-Activated Technologies?

Initially developed as a tool to test with some informative and laughable responses to voice queries to becoming a major digital trend these days, voice-search has taken everyone by storm. It has been observed that most of the people are relying on Smartphone and tablets than ever before. This makes it utterly vital to have voice search on mobile devices. According to several resources, more than 420 million voice assistants have been sold. In addition to this, people have started using the voice assistant way more than they used to, mostly for commands. For example, setting an alarm, call mom, however, there is still a lot of growing potential in the technology.

About Voice Search Optimization

In simple words, it is a process of optimizing your content in a way that convinces these smart assistants to present it to end users as soon as they ask a relevant question. In fact, it is assumed that Voice- enabled search will soon become a dominant form of search even if it doesn’t present the user with a list of results like Google search result page does. So that the user doesn’t require to waste any time. Instead, Alexa, Siri, Cortana and the company each decide what the top result is, and they present that ” and only that.

So basically when it comes to voice search optimization “ either you have it all or nothing.

Its benefits include:

Day by day these voice recognition technologies have started becoming more accurate and versatile. Due to which users have started realizing the benefits offered by such innovation.

• It allows them to multitask more easily
• Faster results than other devices.
• It empowers them to instantly get answers and information.
• Daily routine becomes easier

Not only for workaholics, voice commands act as a great tool when you are cooking and there is a sudden need to check out a recipe but unfortunately, you cannot as your hands are covered in flour. Apart from this, it even acts as a popular hands-free method that can even help you in getting local business information while driving.

So, are you ready optimizing for voice search?

Like I said before, voice search is emerging and smart marketers have successfully started optimizing it now to get the most out of search marketing in the long run. Now unlike others, if you really want to stand out from the crowd for search engines, voice search optimizations have to be a must activity. But the question is how?

Keyword Research for Voice Search

Have you ever thought of semantic differences in terms of queries? I mean the way we type and the way we speak? For example, if someone aims to buy a new home voice assistant so what they would type is- home voice assistants but with voice search, they could say- what is the best home voice assistant?

Therefore, you require to brainstorm what kind of questions people might ask related to your targeted keywords.

Of course, you can seek help from lots of tools such as answer the public where all you need to type is the root keyword and soon you will find a list of commonly asked questions related to that keyword in particular.

Other than this, you can even make use of people also ask feature offered by Google. Just type in a question you’ve already brainstormed and it will show other related questions.

Site Structure & Content Development

While building a content strategy for voice search optimization, map questions onto the various points of your customer journey. Certain things to consider are:

• Awareness: What’s the best home voice assistant?
• Interest: Can you make a phone call with Google home?
• Evaluation: Who is more intelligent Siri or Google?
• Purchase: How much does an Amazon Echo cost?
• Custom support: Why does Google home sometimes not respond?
• Loyalty: What products work with Google Home?

Now there are three main types that work well for voice search optimization:

• Informational intent– Guides, how-tos, etc
• Navigational intent– store locations, services, press releases, customer service info)
• Transactional intent– videos, product information, comparisons, product stories)

Structured Data Optimization

Optimizing for voice search can be hit and miss. Unlike regular search results where the second result is more likely to attract a of valuable traffic. Voice search technology is something that only returns one answer to searches from the number one best-optimized result.

So the real key to success is making your content as relevant as possible to Google for the specific query. Apart from this, Google bots better understand your content and its relevance is to make use of structured data (schema) markup. Further, I would like to mention some information that can be identified for Google bots is:

• Products
• Places
• People
• Organizations
• Events
• Recipes
• Reviews
• How-to content
• News articles and other creative work   

Bottom line

Well, it can never be predicted if voice commands will one day dominate search queries or not. But one thing is for sure, that voice commands are definitely poised to have a big impact on search marketing.