Alexa, Relocate My Budget

RETAILTECH
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Is Voice Search on the horizon of getting found?

You’re mid-dinner-cleaning-dishes and squeezing
shards of soap into the sink. It’s undeniably easier to ask Siri to source more SLS-free suds than it is to drop the knife, dry your hands, find your phone, and discover—by then—you’ve already forgotten your initial intent. Cue the rise of voice search. Percolating for the last half-decade, the technology is seeing rapid growth in 2018.

Statistics iterate the shift from tiny taps to targeted talking. 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020, per comScore; about 30% of all searches will be done without a screen by 2020, per Gartner; and 55% of all US households are predicted to own a smart speaker by 2022, per https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/08/voice-enabled-smart-speakers-to-reach-55-of-u-s-households-by-2022-says-report/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAH3LZpaVszSEIRmINX0f8rsi6cOn87Moan4BemtY0FvkM1fZ8Bqw46uQ0-4dh_f6JIHpig9dvlQTN02Tq2THuGKVMghL88a3sxLadqidFwIj4opJghBtQ8VISSWmbSD9IzFfVd-2RYPx8WU41O8yMg8S4XLNPzW-i9a4_vda7w4O. With voice searches typically returning just one or two results, success here really relies on being in first position. 

Cover your audio bases and hit the speaker home run with the following tactics: First, recognize that there isn’t just one approach to SEO for voice. Google Home uses Google data; Siri and Alexa pull Bing data. Alexa also looks at previous purchases. Then, conquer keywords. Google provides most voice answers from the featured snippet (answer box) at the top of search results. Get the keywords that get the box. Finally: make your content mobile-friendly and use it to answer questions. “People Also Ask” queries show often in search results. Looking for more answers? “Ok Google: create an Actions project.”

This story is brought to you by guest writer Debra Brodsky.  

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