Are your blogs optimised for voice search? Probably not.

“Hey, are voice searches dominating Google?”

How outraged were you when you found out your blogs weren’t ranking on Google? Or haven’t you figured it out yet?

Despite the abundance of information that’s readily available on the internet, Google remains the mythical 8th wonder of the world.

In 2017 I took my first digital marketing class. I learned all about the Google algorithm, SEO and the importance of keywords. I was ready to apply for an internship at Google (I was seduced by the beanbags and ping pong tables more than anything else).

Everything was going well. I was an aspiring Google professional equipped with my desire to learn more about this enigma that had evaded my understanding for so long. I applied new concepts to my job and pretty soon we were seeing organic growth. All was well.

But then 2018 came and Alexa’s domination happened. Amazon’s “Alexa” saw a massive increase in sales that year. The number of recipes festive and hungry users asked Alexa for tripled compared to the previous holiday season.

Like all good consumers, we were only too eager to buy into the concept that with a somewhat justifiable investment we could revel in infinite possibility. The purchase of a Google Home or Alexa device promised to ease our stress and simplify our life. Consumers embraced, or rather, they demanded more voice activated appliances.

Amazon’s “Alexa”

The first rule of marketing has always been to understand human behaviour. As consumers attitudes, expectations and values shift over time, the only thing you can rely on is our incessant laziness. After all, who would want to type for their search when they could simply speak to their new AI assistant?

As we change the way we search for things, marketers need to change the keywords and phrases we use to optimise our marketing material. Key phrases such as “Best Melbourne takeaway restaurant 2020” needs to be adjusted to “What’s the best restaurant in Melbourne open for takeaway in 2020?”.

For the first time in Copywriting since the rise of the sun (or Internet) we must write in the way people speak rather than the way they type. I told you before that people, as a collective whole, are lazy. We’re lazy in the way that we buy and we’re lazy in the way that we search.

We wouldn’t dream of taking the time to type out a coherent sentence when a few keywords will bring us the same result, but we can justify saying that sentence to our home devices because speaking is a natural and familiar concept to us (for now).

Why does all of this matter? Because without investing in ensuring your SEO is optimised for today’s times, your brand is obsolete. It’s as simple as that.

Marketers have always been able to benefit from (exploit) consumers inability to stay focused.Searching for a place to eat becomes rather difficult when there are so many options on the first page of google that appeal to you. Pop up ads, click bait and insanely appealing photography can make a search process last for minutes when it should last for a few seconds. But not anymore. An optimised search result is revealed from Alexa’s inanimate lips and that customer’s fate is instantly sealed.

Brands that are ahead of the game have already ensured their blogs and webpages are optimised for voice activated searches. Has yours?