Is Your Digital Fundraising Activity Ready For Voice Search?

Posted by Ben Crook on 17 January 2018

Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Home Pod? It doesn’t take a genius to know voice search has finally announced itself on the big stage and has been active for over a year in households across the globe. This begs the question, is your fundraising activity ready for voice search? Have you implemented voice search in your fundraising campaign or integrated it in any shape or form throughout your charity or business? Will voice search leave your business in the dark and will this affect your traffic?

2017 has been a big learning curve for voice search and has seen a huge demand for all voice related devices, of which Amazons Alexa is significantly winning so far. In 2018, a continued growth in popularity of voice searches is likely to rise and charities and businesses alike need to start thinking about how donors could use voice queries to donate or learn more about your organisation.

So how can you prepare yourself for this monumental change? Here are 4 tips you could apply to enhance your voice search parameters:

1. Long tail keywords

You have a much better chance to rank in search engines for long tail keywords with specific related content, rather than broader keywords. e.g. ‘donate to children in Syria’ rather than just ‘donate’. The typical keywords, that we all know so well, are transforming to actual key-sentences. With a simple click, we can ask a complete question and get a legitimate answer within seconds on various applications and search engines. This also causes the voice search keywords to contain our natural language, almost exactly how we would talk in our day to day life. So how do we generate long tail keywords? Document which questions the customer service or accounts department receive from your donors. This way, you can put the exact sentences and phrases that your donors use to ask a specific question about your cause, into your content!

2. Mobile Sites

Responsive websites are now the standard design by default and are essential when fundraising. Brands need to think about how consumers interact with mobile devices and adapt their sites accordingly. Due to the development of technologies like Siri and Google Assistant, your website must be fully optimised for mobile as voice searches will predominantly be made on the go.

3. Holistic landing pages

Landing pages are a great way to introduce unique pages for keywords. Users can be transported to various pages via links in the landing pages, to sections of the website holding specific content that is all related to one long tail keyword. Links and call-to-actions are paramount on these landing pages and the intent should always be tailored to the goal of the content. Holistic landing pages are a great way to capture awareness of specific long tail keyword searches via voice search, so make sure you build the landing pages accordingly to your most popular offering.

4. Integrated content approach

In 2018, we would expect to see charities and businesses to continue to syndicate content with other marketing channels. Distributing the right content at the right stage in the buyer’s journey, will not only generate further donations, but it will be much easier to determine the full value of content across all channels to prove ROI. As a final note, don’t forget to update all your company’s details on third party directories such as Google Plus and Yell, as devices integrated with voice search are looking for this information using such directories.

There we have it, 4 great ways to prepare yourself for the revolution that will continue to dominate the market this year and beyond.

If you’d like to continue to enhance your fundraising strategy, our blog 10 incredible fundraising statistics from 2017 may just help you do that!

Ben Crook

Chief Operating Officer

Ben is at the forefront of every project in Givergy, listing and actioning constant improvements across the business. With over a decade of experience in the charity and events sector he brings a deep understanding of what the fundraising industry needs to operate effectively and efficiently.