PPC campaigns have had to evolve over the years as search engines introduced new algorithms and as technology has changed. Now, these campaigns must be adjusted once again to take into account voice search. As more smartphones and home assistant devices such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa become more popular, more and more voice searches will be done. If you are still running your PPC campaigns like you always have, here are a few things to consider about how voice search may be affecting them.
Voice Search is Primarily Tied to Mobile
While home assistants are doing some searches, most people are using their smartphones to do voice search. This means you need to make certain all of your PPC campaigns lead to landing pages that are mobile-compliant. Your campaigns also need to include your location. Many voice searches are for locations “near me.” If you don’t have any location included in your campaign, you’ll lose those potential customers.
People Speak Differently than they Type
If someone is at a computer and wants to check the weather, they might go to Google and search for their location plus weather. For example, someone in Denver would search for “Denver weather.” However, someone doing a voice search wouldn’t say that. Instead, they would be likely say something more natural sounding, like “what’s the weather today in Denver?” or simply “what’s the weather like today?” The smart assistant would automatically fill in the current location.
Voice searches are much more likely to be questions, too. Many of them will start with one of the key “W” words – “who, “what,” “when,” “where,” and “why.” Some may also start with “how.” These questions are likely to be full sentences rather than fragments, which is what many typed out queries are.
If your PPC campaign doesn’t take into account our natural way of talking, it’s likely to not match some of these queries. Again, think about how someone would ask about the weather over how they would type it out. A good PPC campaign now needs to include keywords and phrases that match both.
Need some help updating your PPC campaigns to include voice searches? BlendIM is here to help. Contact us today to talk about what we can do for you.
