Why EDM blogs should be optimizing for voice search

Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomePod. They have one thing in common: they are the way in which consumers will search over the coming years. With Alexa overtaking the likes of Facebook, Spotify, Instagram (and many others) as number one in the app store around the world, it is undeniable that voice is beginning to have an impact on the way in which we interact with the internet. But how can the EDM industry adapt to it? That’s what we’re discussing in this article.

Voice saves time. It’s that simple. What may take you 20 seconds to say in a voice message may take several minutes typing out on messenger. No matter what, humans will always learn towards time. It’s the reason we prefer direct flights over ones with long connection times. It’s the reason why so many people complain at festival bathroom lines, and long security waits at terminals. Ultimately, consumers will always adapt technology that saves time on a massive scale. Voice Devices provide that advantage. 

Instead of searching the 26th President of the United States, you can simply ask Alexa. In the shower and had an awesome idea for a melody? Ask your device to voice record it for you. Want to know when your favourite DJ is within a 100-mile radius of your town? Your device will have the knowledge to tell you, and the capability to instantly book tickets. All of a sudden, the consumer experience is flawless and will change the shape of the music industry as we know it. But with many blogs being built on traditional SEO, it is simply a fact that they will need to adapt or face the consequences over the coming years. Despite what some people may think, it’s the direction the market is moving in, and so we must embrace it. 

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization strategy, blogs will need to put a lot of research into their keywords over the coming months/years. The reason for this is because the very nature of search is changing. Of course, people can put words in quotations during a google search in order to make it more advanced. But with voice, a more natural approach is required. How would you search for an article if you were asking a question to an Alexa? How would you find out the upcoming lineup of Tomorrowland using a voice search? Reverse engineering the vocal questions will be essential to keyword optimization. According to Google’s own data, approximately 1/5 of all searches are done by voice. That’s 20% of the market. Understandably, this number is predicted to increase exponentially over the coming years. 

For a second, put yourself in the shoes of a consumer. Have you ever searched for something and been unhappy with the result? Or had to search through multiple websites to find the exact answer that you were looking for? Voice search removes all of that friction and provides an instant answer due it being naturally more inclined towards conversational speech. 

But what is voice Search Engine Optimization? It’s essentially understanding the nuances between spoken and written content. For example, the way you would type a question is often very different from how you would ask it when speaking. In order to combat different slang and vocabulary around the world, detailed long-tail keywords will be absolutely essential to the success of blogs over the coming years. As well as reaching a higher audience, it will give you a better chance of being the search result when somebody asks their voice device a question surrounding electronic music. 

For example, somebody could type “best keyboards” into Google and get a plethora of results. However, if you ask an Amazon Alexa “what is the best keyboard to buy for music production”, it will be able to analyze consumer reviews & other data to automatically find the highest rated keyboard on Amazon. Whether marketers like it or not, voice search is going to remove any unwanted results from the search engines – thus significantly reducing traffic. 

Another voice trend to watch out for is speech vs text differences and subtleties. If you speak aloud the last few messages you wrote, there’s a good chance they will sound weird due to multiple abbreviations and emojis. Despite this, many EDM blogs and websites are (understandably) geared towards the written text. But with the era of voice just around the corner, everything is about to change.

Another advantage of voice search is putting local search engine optimization on a pedestal. After all, it is inevitable that people will be asking Siri & Alexa the best music festivals to attend during 2019 in Europe. Of course, this will be a huge source of traffic over the coming years/decades. For example, festival owners could include a lot of long-tail keywords specially geared towards speech patterns on their website. Whilst doing that, it’s a good opportunity to ensure that the website’s mobile experience is absolutely flawless. After all, the amount of desktop users around the world is significantly declining. 

Essentially, music blogs, festivals, hardware stores, and a variety of other businesses within the music industry need to be ensuring that their mobile & voice strategies are being implemented during 2019 in order to get ahead of the overall market. By doing this, they have a much higher probability of being one of the first voice search results when the era of voice is finally amongst us. Voice search may be changing the way in which a website is delivered to a consumer, however, the basics of SEO shall remain the same.