Franchise Marketing Solutions In The Era Of Voice Search

The era of voice search is upon us. Unless you update your franchise marketing solutions, your brand name will soon slide down the SERP rankings. Today’s post is all about how to optimize for voice search.

The Dawn Of The Voice Search Era Is Upon Us

Long before voice technology achieved viability, search was a critical component of effective e-commerce. In order to buy your franchise’s product or service, consumers need to first find your site, and on-site searchers are over 200% more likely to convert to sales than casual browsers (Bentahar & Pookulangara, 2019).

Accordingly, search engine optimization became a mainstay in the Internet Era. Companies like ours developed a whole host of franchise marketing solutions to help brands secure one of the top-10 local SERP positions. Then, as now, the best of these SEO tactics were built around specific search behaviors. With the bulk of searches occurring via text—most using simple keyword phrases, like “franchise marketing solutions” or “pizza delivery”—the majority of SEO tactics developed accordingly, fitting keyword phrases that matched user search terms into valuable and relevant pieces of content.

Then IBM’s Watson showed up in 2010 and changed everything. Watson was a powerful voice recognition question-answer computer system that famously beat Trivia grandmasters on the TV quiz show Jeopardy. One year later, Google launched Voice Search and Apple released its first voice-activated digital personal assistant, Siri.

Watson defeats Trivia Grandmasters and lays the foundation for voice search technology in 2010.

And just like that, the dawn of the voice search era was upon us. Researchers termed it a “disruptive technology” early on, recognizing the myriad ways voice search could redefine the internet marketing landscape (Bentahar & Pookulangara, 2019). For starters, voice search redefines the meaning of “mobile search,” giving users all sorts of new voice search tools outside of their smartphones—Alexa, Google Home or Google Nest, Amazon Echo, and the list goes on.

The ubiquity of sophisticated voice search technology quickly changed the way people search. Gone are the days of text-based search behaviors and their corresponding SEO tactics. Instead of typing in a disjointed cluster of keywords, users now search in conversational fashion, speaking in full sentences and using informal language while framing queries in the form of questions.

Consumers Demand Voice Search Visibility Is 2020 And Beyond

Research shows the extent to which consumers are embracing voice search technology:

• A 2020 report from SearchEngineWatch suggests that 31% of smartphone users use voice at least once per week, and 20% of all queries on Google’s mobile app and Android devices are made with voice search
• In one SKIM study, 74% of survey respondents indicated that text-only search was insufficient for their needs
• “Voice commerce” is projected to explode over the next few years, from $2 billion in 2018 to more than $40 billion by 2022 (O’Brien, 2018)
• Gartner research predicts that early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by as much as 30 percent

If people aren’t asking Siri, Google, or Amazon Echo about your business now, they soon will be. And you’d better be there to meet them!

These are just a few of the franchise marketing solutions we implement to optimize your online visibility in the era of voice search:

• Claim your Google My Business listing. If you haven’t done so already, claiming your Google My Business listing is a must. It’s fast, free, and one of the best ways for Google to find out more information about your business, including the product/service category, address, phone number, and business hours.This is a fundamental SEO practice, but it’s even more important in the era of voice search, where the majority of searches are local in nature. GMB listings appear at the very top of the SERP page, so when someone asks Siri for local recommendations, your brand name is more likely to pop up.
• Emphasize conversational keywords. Nowadays, voice search keywords are frequently described as “long-tail+,” with the “+” referring to the conversational parts of speech surrounding the keyword core. Start thinking about how to make your keyword strategy more conversational in nature, with the end goal to mimic the way people talk and ask questions aloud. For instance, the barebones keyword phrase “franchise marketing solutions” might become “Find franchise marketing solutions near me” or “What are some franchise marketing solutions?” One easy way to get started is to write down the questions you hear from customers on the phone, then create text content that matches their verbiage.
• Leverage the power of the FAQ page. FAQ pages are very effective voice search optimization tools, allowing you to create high-powered landing pages that answer several common questions at once. Again, aim for conversational “long-tail+” keywords, and avoid stilted phrasing where possible.FAQ pages also give your content multiple chances to appear as one of Google’s Featured Snippets, sometimes referred to as “position zero” on the SERP because it appears before the #1 search result. Featured Snippets get read aloud by Google Home and Google Assistant when answering voice queries.

Find More Franchise Marketing Solutions — Free Voice Search Optimization Consultation

The 3 tips shared above will certainly improve your voice search visibility, but there’s much more to optimization than that. Lucky for you, we love to talk about franchise marketing solutions, and our franchise marketing experts are standing by to chat.

Call 866-311-7189 or fill out the contact form on the ClickTecs Contact Page to book a 100% free consultation.

References

Bentahar, A., & Pookulangara, S. (2019, December). Hey Google: Voice Search and Customer’s Path to Purchase. In International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings (Vol. 76, No. 1). Iowa State University Digital Press.

O’Brien, M. (2018). What’s your Alexa strategy? Smart speakers and their role in the customer journey. ClickZ. Retrieved from https://www.clickz.com/alexa-google-home-customerjourney/214237