From Siri to Alexa and every AI-powered helper in-between, voice assistants have taken the tech world by storm in the past few years. At the beginning of 2018, Alpine AI reported that these clever bots were racking up roughly one billion searches a month. And by the year 2020, comScore predicts a whopping 50 percent of all searches will be conducted by voice alone.
At face-value, this Jetsons-like tech development is uber cool and convenient. However, that’s for the user. How are voice assistants affecting the way we writers and internet marketers are creating our content? Just read on to find out…
We Need to Gear Content for Quick & On-the-Go Searches
The more advancements we see in the tech industry, the faster our daily life just seems to get. This is true for transportation, shopping, and yes, even learning.
That fast pace is a little dizzying, but it can also be substantially more convenient, which is why we see so many people searching for information via voice assistants. The moment a question pops into their head, they can pull out their phone or fire off an inquiry to their smart speaker. It’s effortless.
If the questions are quick, we need our answers to be, too. As we write content, we can structure it in such a way that voice assistants can easily cherry-pick the information people are most looking for. This means keeping our answers concise and easily digestible, and segmenting them clearly with more bullet points and tables. The easier to find, the better.
We Need to Keep Things Conversational
Keyword targeting has, for so long, been one of the strongest tools of SEO. And while we find that voice assistants are still picking up on keywords, the framing of them needs to be a little bit different.
When we type a question or topic into a Google search bar, we have the tendency to do so in a way that burns all our elementary grammar rules to the ground. In other words, we’re typing in incomplete, sometimes nonsensical sentences. This has never mattered much though, because search engines are smart enough to understand what you’re getting at.
The thing is, we don’t speak like that. We ask our voice assistants questions in almost the same way we would our friends.
To hit on the voice target, we need to keep our SEO practices light and conversational, and answer complete questions.
We Need to Shift Our Demographics
Everyone and their grandmother is surfing the web these days (seriously, you’d be surprised how savvy grandma might be). But not everyone is using voice assistants… Yet.
The vast majority of voice assistant searches are coming from millennials. Baby Boomers only account for approximately ten percent of these searches, but even they are poised to start catching on.
To capitalize on those millennial voice searches now, we need to provide the kind of content they’re looking for: Reviews and FAQs.
Reviews, of course, cater to those discerning consumers among us. And seeing as the millennial age has given us websites like Yelp and Foursquare, we know there are plenty of them.
FAQs, on the other hand, are just designed for those looking for direct, quick answers to their burning questions. While writing an FAQ, you can even answer questions related to the topic you’re focusing on (glance at the related questions at the bottom of your Google search page for inspiration).
Our Voice Assistants Are Here to Stay
Not only can we be certain that voice assistants are sticking around, but we can also be certain that they’ll be expanding their popularity in the years to come.
If you’re looking to stay on top of trends and tailor your content marketing for voice searches, try reaching out to our team of experts. We have plenty more tips to share!