Voice Search Optimization in 2021 Using an Unstoppable Copywriting Formula
Today’s connection post (How About an Unstoppable Copywriting Formula on How to Optimize Voice Search in 2021?) is brought to you by Liz Slyman. Over the past decade, Liz has worked as a copywriter and digital marketing executive for a multitude of companies from startups and mid-sized businesses to working as the VP of marketing for award-winning, platinum-selling artists. Leveraging an understanding of the nuance of language in marketing, Liz founded Amplihigher, a content marketing and copywriting agency designed to connect consumers to companies in a way that results in next-level brand expansion.
Voice search is growing, and it’s here to stay. With that in mind, optimizing your copywriting and content writing for voice search should play as prominent a role as traditional search engine optimization in your marketing strategy.
How Important Is Voice Search?
Reports suggest that 111.8 million people in the US are using voice search to find answers to their queries.
While voice search hasn’t overtaken the traditional search engine use, where you head to a search engine’s home page and type in your query, it’s certainly catching up. The growth of voice search is undeniable, and there are solid reasons why.
What Are The Benefits Of Voice Search?
The main benefits of voice search are clearly linked to user experience:
- It demands less effort – you don’t have to open your laptop, smartphone, or tablet, then launch your internet provider, navigate to the search engine’s homepage, type in your query, hit enter, and then select a page from the SERPs that best fit the content you were looking for.
Instead, you simply need to verbalize your question and listen to the answer.
- It’s quicker – as with the point above, by using voice search, you’re dividing the time it takes to get an answer to your query.
- It’s more interactive – even though you’re asking a robot a question, we value it as human-to-human interaction. It feels more personable and approachable than typing a query into a search engine.
Why Is Voice Search Optimization Important?
Voice search optimization is becoming increasingly important in the online marketing world. Due to the 3 key benefits above, more people ask Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google questions that they would originally have typed.
With such a high number of people using smart speakers, digital marketers and brand owners need to stretch their SEO strategy to include voice search, too.
Optimizing your content or copywriting for voice search can:
- Position your brand as the expert within the industry
- Deliver higher levels of traffic to your website
- Develop a more interactive relationship between your brand and searchers
- Harvest and increase trust levels through giving valuable content and information
- Show your audience that your brand is up-to-date and modern
- Widen your brand’s reputation
How Do I Get My Website Found On Voice Search?
We’re going to break down 4 essential methods to make sure your content is relayed by Alexa (or any of the other smart-speaker robots).
- Post Regular Content Focusing On Long-Tail Keywords
As with traditional search engine optimization, getting found on Google means you’ll need to post and update your website with content regularly and consistently.
When doing so, you’ll need to focus on long-tail keywords if you’re hoping to optimize your content for voice search.
Long-tail keywords are simply more than one keyword together. For example, ‘Italian restaurants near me’ is an example of the long-tail keyword.
The reason for long-tail keywords in voice search optimization is because of the way searchers use them. We tend to ask full questions, unlike when typing.
For example, it’d be far more likely for us to ask Alexa:
“Hey, Alexa! What’re some Italian restaurants near me?”
Rather than:
“Hey, Alexa! Italian restaurants.’
As such, utilize question headings. Anything that starts with ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘when,’ ‘where,’ ‘why,’ and ‘how’ will boost your chances of ranking for voice search.
- Keep Your Tone Natural And Conversational
As mentioned above, when we talk to a smart-speaker to ask questions, we ask in complete sentences. In addition, we use a conversational tone that mimics human-to-human interaction, so it’s fundamental that the tone of the content or copy is consistent with this.
Avoid jargon and technicalities. Your tone should mimic that of the search itself, so avoid uses of words like ‘simultaneously’ and simply replace them with terms like ‘at the same time.’
As with most copywriting and content writing, simple works best. Not quite sure how to maneuver your copywriting to mimic voice search? Enlist a copywriting agency or take a few copywriting courses to help.
- Focus On Location
The vast majority of voice search queries rely on location based answers. This is particularly true for brick and mortar businesses like beauty salons or restaurants. It can, however, be a challenge for service based, online businesses, as they frequently work with clients all over the world.
Pay attention to your Google listing on Google My Business, ensuring it’s set up and optimized with a location. Even if you’re a digital business with no set address, you’ll need to optimize your listing and content with a location if you want to be found by voice search.
It’s also worth implementing your long-tail keywords into Google My Business, as well as keeping it up to date frequently.
- Focus On And Try To Rank For Featured Snippets
With traditional SEO, a searcher will type in a query and be met with the search engine results page (SERP). They then have the choice of many different websites that they feel will best solve their problem or answer their question.
With voice search, however, you get only one shot to be featured by Alexa or Siri. Paid ads aren’t factored into voice search results, so the featured snippets often get relayed back to the searcher.
As such, focus on getting your content ranked as a featured snippet to ensure solid voice search optimization.
Voice Search Optimization – A Must-Have For Your Marketing Strategy
The world is changing, and technology evolves every single day.
Internet users grow impatient, and won’t tolerate old, out-dated strategies.
It’s fundamental that voice search optimization plays a role in your marketing strategy. If you choose not to, you’ll find that your competitors take advantage of your fallback.
Use these 4 techniques to optimize your content and copy for voice search and gain more leads, increase your conversion rate, and widen your brand’s reputation today.
