If you’re having trouble adapting to the voice-search revolution, or you’re looking to overhaul your web content in 2020, give me a shout! I’d love to help you ensure your website is more welcoming and effective for
your customers.

Write your content with effort and realistic tone and your search rates will improve; you can’t fool the system anymore. The only way to reach the top of the page now is to have great content (including product descriptions and blog posts) that sounds like a human wrote it.

What you need is intuitive, effective, engaging, natural-sounding copy. I think of it like this: the Google engine isn’t a robot anymore, so we don’t need to talk to it like one either. It’s more like Artificial Intelligence than ever before, learning from natural speech and taking notice of content that seems to actually take customer needs and wants to heart.

As Google evolves to deflect even more abuses of its ranking system and more and more people use voice search to get to the content they want, it’s become less important to write with technical keyword research at
the heart of your content.

It sounds odd for me to be asking you to worry less about keywords, but that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Write Naturally, Worry Less About Keywords

To help your products reach your customers this way, you need to incorporate more natural-sounding long-tail keywords within your metadata and copy.

In this example, you might have the words ‘[XYZ product] is the most eco-friendly kitchen spray available in the UK’ within the product’s description, which the voice search technology will easily be able to pick up.

It’s the second one. It will always be the second one.

b)
“Alexa, what’s the most eco-friendly kitchen spray?”

a)
“Alexa, best eco detergent spray UK”

What is a customer more likely to say to their Alexa speaker?

Long-tail search terms are longer, more specific forms of keywords you may have already been using. When SEO keywords are used effectively, long-tail search terms naturally follow within the content.
However, with voice search, it’s rare that a user will start with the SEO-friendly terms.

Think Carefully about Long-Tail Search Terms

With the popularity of voice search soaring, it’s perhaps time to step back slightly from short-form SEO keyword-driven content and to look at the bigger picture. Here are my tips on how to optimise your web
content for voice search.

When you first wrote your web content, it’s probably fair to assume that one of the main priorities at hand was the inclusion of SEO keywords.

SEO has been one of the most important aspects of copywriting for the past decade or more, and has dictated what the vast majority of us write about, promote and even sell on our websites.

How to Optimise Your Content for Voice Search

It’s estimated that 50% of all searches made in 2020 will be via voice. On top of that, 30% of all web browsing will be done without a screen.

Many of these searches result in purchases. That’s mind-blowing, isn’t it? But what does it mean for your website?

Voice-activated search and speakers are fast-becoming the UK’s favourite way of finding information out and searching for audio and visual content. Bear that in mind when you’re writing your next blog post.

Until next time…

We’ve all heard that having a strong tone of voice is vital for any brand to succeed online. In the age of social media and online marketing, content marketing is king, and to make effective, engaging content, you need to write with personality and conviction.

This is what a great tone of voice does: it shapes the marketing statements, calls to action and key messages you put out into the world into easily-understood, conversational language.

Think about it. How are your customers meant to feel compelled to act on your advertisements if they can’t really get to grips with what you’re saying? You wouldn’t fly to Cuba on your holidays and try to speak to everyone you met in French. You need to talk to people in language they understand!

But, things can get too complicated. When tone of voice starts dictating your messages, you might have a monster on your hands. You should only be using your tone to make your messages clearer, not the other way around.

This happens more than you think. As tone of voice is (or should be) created through a rigorous set of guidelines that binds how you communicate directly with your customers with your brand’s aims, it makes sense that the content you create using it fits those goals. But don’t let it overtake. If you’re beginning to think ‘this content I’m sharing doesn’t hit any of our targets, but it matches the brand’, it’s time to step back and think about what you’re creating your content for.

Not sure what I mean? Okay, let’s take a look at a great example of corporate copywriting to see how the company in question crafts its tone of voice around its content — and not the other way around.

Innocent Smoothies

Let’s look at a copywriting heavyweight.

Everyone in marketing knows Innocent’s modus operandi: they are sugary sweet and as chirpy as a newborn chick, but they get their message across quicker than a kingfisher. In and out like a flash.

Their trick is that all of their copy is really easy to read. Childish, even. You’ve read one of their adverts or bottle labels before you’ve even noticed, and it’s left you knowing more about them — as well as the feeling that you know them. That’s tone of voice.

Even their more corporate content has a touch of the whimsical about it, using simple, casual language to convey a company that — well, what do you think it conveys? How does this paragraph make you feel?

The point is, they’re leading the conversation with corporate goals and using a solid, well-embedded tone of voice to smooth out the sharp, business-like edges.

I’m not saying you need to hop on the cutesy copy bandwagon. It probably won’t suit you, and it has almost definitely been replicated to death. What I want you to remember is this simple rule:

Content first, then tone of voice. Everything else should fall into place.

Until next time…

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