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Christmas saw an explosion in sales of digital assistants, with Amazon Echo and Google Assistant making their first foray into many UK homes. Demand was so unprecedented that the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot completely sold out during the festive period. Although it\u2019s some way from reaching tipping point, the current popularity of digital assistants is powering rapid growth in AI enabled voice search, which brings with it new priorities and considerations for local search marketers.<\/p>\n
According to comScore, 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. One of the biggest implications of the voice search and digital assistant trend is that it makes having a screen optional, based on the increasing move towards smart home hubs. Speaking at the launch of AI system Viv last summer, Dag Kittlaus co-founder of Siri (now owned by Apple) and CEO of Viv said: \u201cit\u2019s a race to a single interface for the user. Why have multiple interfaces, when you only need one? The concept of a single intelligent portal into everything digital, which is a big step beyond Google, is a winner we believe.\u201d So at some point in the conceivable future, it\u2019s likely we\u2019ll have one ultimate personal assistant \u2018who\u2019 will provide us with all the information we require, without us potentially ever needing to read a word. This creates new challenges for local marketers, as businesses will need to rank highly enough in local search results to be selected by digital assistants.<\/p>\n
Competition to be the \u2018best source\u2019 of information is only likely to get more fierce, and although the transformation won\u2019t happen overnight, now\u2019s the time for local marketers to be optimising their strategies for AI voice search. If you\u2019re keen to learn more, here are some pointers on how to ensure your business is increasingly recognised by voice assistants…<\/p>\n
Use conversational language<\/strong><\/p>\n Traditional search taught us to communicate with search engines in crude, keyword-heavy, truncated phrases; a far cry from natural speech. But voice search is changing this and increasingly moving towards conversational language, involving proper questions and answers. There\u2019s the expectation that in the future, voice assistants and bots will be able to converse with us in a human way; in some places this is already happening.<\/p>\n To aid this, local marketers need to move beyond keyword-laden copy, and instead make sure their website incorporates natural language. So the focus will be to write for humans first, and search engines second. Since digital assistants often read web copy aloud in response to a user query, it\u2019s important that copy reads well, is clear and makes good sense.<\/p>\n Look out for natural language queries within your web analytics<\/strong><\/p>\n PPC approaches will also need to adapt and target keywords that incorporate natural speech patterns. For this reason, long-tail keywords and phrases will become critical, and particularly those that have local intent and a good amount of contextual information. Also, within local search, voice queries are increasingly likely to contain the important phrase \u201cnear me\u201d, which shows that the searcher is looking for a local business. According to research, mobile voice searches are three times more likely to be local\u00a0than text, so optimising for\u00a0local search\u00a0and\u00a0mobile\u00a0will also help businesses to rank for many voice searches.<\/p>\n So for example, through traditional web-based search a user looking for a tradesman to sand the floors within their home might type in \u201cfloor sanding + Bournemouth\u201d; but with the advanced capabilities of voice search,\u00a0 the same query might become \u201cshow me the best floor sanding companies near me\u201d, or \u201crecommend the most affordable floor sanding companies near me\u201d.<\/p>\n At the moment there\u2019s no way to easily tell which users are arriving at your site through voice search, but Google is rumoured to be developing a feature within Google Analytics. Looking out for queries using natural language will be a good indicator of someone who\u2019s arrived through voice search, as well as providing useful intelligence for your SEO and PPC strategies.<\/p>\n \n Get exclusive insights into digital \n \n \n Stay Forward <\/h2>\n
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