Common Mistakes Brands Make With Voice Search

While many CPG brands have learned to navigate best practices for voice search in order to boost their results in these kinds of searches, they can still make mistakes along the way. Here are some of the common mistakes brands make in their CPG marketing efforts with voice search and how you can avoid them.

Not Claiming Your Google My Business Listing

Google currently claims 91% of all online searches, so claiming your Google My Business listing is an essential way for voice search assistants to pick up your content. This is particularly true when local search makes up a big share of voice searches and is an integral way voice search is geared. 

Google My Business is completely free and allows you to add custom content like sales, coupons, and events that could help to boost your voice search results even more. And if you don't claim your listing, someone else could claim it and use it to post negative information about your business. 

Non-Mobile Friendly Website

Mobile searches save people time and can be done away from home when computers and the internet are not accessible. Many voice searches are now done through smartphones, and they look for content that is optimized for mobile in their results. Having your site optimized for mobile is a must, as is keeping it updated to the latest best practices and helpful tools. 

Not Using the Right Search Terms in Your Content

Voice searches use search terms that are in the form of questions, and your content should reflect this if you want to appear in voice search results. Your content should include questions and answers to common questions about your product in order for voice assistant software to pick it up and include it in voice search results. Think about the 5 Ws (and 1 H) when crafting your content: who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Using Language That Is Too Formal 

Voice searches look for conversational language so that when they give answers to people's questions, it sounds conversational (if robotic, in some cases). Formal language does not translate well to voice searches, and people can't understand it as well as they can when language is conversational. 

Not Responding to Reviews

Voice searches can pick up content from customer reviews, and that holds true whether they are positive or negative. If you don't want voice searchers to hear negative reviews of your brand, you need to respond to both positive and negative reviews in order to mitigate the impact of the negative reviews and show that you are responsive to all reviews. Responsiveness shows customers that your business is active and that you care about customer service. 

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