As humanity continues to take bigger and bigger strides with the help of technology, it has resulted in seismic shifts in some of the most fundamental aspects of how we use technology in our daily lives.

In the context of marketing (more precisely, digital marketing ), one such game-changing shift has happened in the form of voice-based searches owing to virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa, Siri, ELSA, Google Assistant etc. To understand the impact of this innovative technology, here is a factoid - over 27% of the global online population used voice search on more than one occasion in the last year (Source: Think with Google).

Exciting as it sounds, it also presents a new challenge to digital marketers. Voice search marketing, which is far more unpredictable than text search marketing, needs to be leveraged to market the products/services being marketed. This means that the marketing tactics and content needs to be optimised for the AI applications which process voice searches. Given that SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the optimisation of a website to make sure that it gives the best chance of ranking on the search engine results page, there is precedence to this in text-based searches. However, with voice-based searches, the margin for error is significantly less. Unlike on a normal SERP, the user cannot see all the search results. As a result (pun intended), if you are not ranked at the top, there is a real possibility the user will never discover your brand.

So here are Idecution’s tips on voice search optimization in digital marketing for your website:

• Make sure that your content is always structured in a manner which makes it clear to the AI process what the questions or problem statements are and what is the solution offered by your product/service. These questions ideally should be in the form of who/what/when/where/why as is the case in normal offline conversations.


• Make sure that your answers are written keeping in mind that they will not be read directly by a human user but rather read to the user by an AI. Hence, it is a good practice to keep the tone more organic, similar to how that particular question would be answered in day-to-day conversations. It is also a good practice to keep the answer informal and to limit it to less than 30 words whenever possible.


• Local SEO practices are now more important than ever given that most of the voice-based searches are customers asking for directions to their nearest store, restaurant, cinema etc.


• Use header tags and schema markup to make sure that the algorithm understands exactly where the user question is on your website and what is the answer you have provided. In order to accomplish this, one thing that would differ from normal SEO practice is that instead of using shorter and more popular keywords in your header tags, you will have to use long-tailed keywords. If possible, you will also have to frame them as questions and use them in header tags while providing answers below them. Using schema markup also allows you to ensure that you give the algorithm as much information as possible about all sections of your website, thus allowing it to use your site for more and more specific queries.

Voice-based searches, while being more challenging to address and process content for, have a much higher potential for customer happiness when done right. Voice searches are much more frictionless as compared to any other form of search and when leveraged properly, increase the prospects of the target audience engaging with your brand.

If you want to know more about voice search optimisation in digital marketing, schedule a call with our experts and discover how we as a Search Engine Marketing Agency can help you get the best ROI out of one of the fastest growing search engine technologies.

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