Voice search is everywhere now—and it’s here to stay!
Digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are integrated into now-ubiquitous smart home devices, like Amazon Echo and Google Nest, as well as into phones, tablets, smartwatches, cars, and even refrigerators. Thanks to advancements in AI, voice search results are continually becoming more relevant and helpful. With all this in mind, we expect voice search to become more and more essential.
So, what does this mean for your business? How can you thrive in a voice-search world? Let’s dive in.
How to Optimize for Voice Search:
Here are some tips you can use to make sure your website and content are ready to be featured by voice search.
Tip 1: Create an FAQ page optimized for voice search. When you have common questions about your business clearly answered in a conversational tone, it makes it easier for search engines to pull information from your site in response to a voice query. Of course, this page can benefit any user, not just those using voice search!
Tip 2: Revisit your content strategy with voice search in mind. Think about common questions or pain points for your buyer personas when choosing SEO keywords, content pillars, and topic clusters for your blog. You can pull great long-tail keywords from questions like “What’s the best independent bookshop in Washington DC?”
Tip 3: Evaluate and improve your site’s user experience. Things like load speed, page security, mobile optimization, and responsive design aren’t just important for your user experience. They also affect how you’re ranked by search engines, and whether or not you’ll be chosen for voice search results.
Tip 4: Ensure your business information is accurate everywhere you’re listed. Your address is especially important—you want your salon to come up when potential customers ask Siri “Where can I get a haircut nearby?”, right?—but double check your phone number and email address, too. Make sure you update your business hours on all platforms whenever you make changes.
Tip 5: Implement schema markup on your website. Schema markup, or structured data, is code that you can add to your page’s HTML to help search engines understand the information on your website better. When you use schema markup, you’re more likely to be chosen for voice search results. You’re more likely to be chosen for search engine results page (SERP) features like Google’s Featured Snippet and AI Overviews, too.
Using these five tips, you’ll be well on your way to appearing in more voice searches. Don’t forget to follow Google E-E-A-T guidelines, as content quality always matters! When you provide users with quality information that’s truly helpful, you’ll be able to build your authority and expand your reach. This is yet another way digital marketing can help your business grow.
Get Started Today
If you’d like to optimize for voice search but need some help, 2XM is here! We can lead you through any part of the process, from refreshing your content strategy to overhauling your website or improving your user experience. Contact us for a FREE 60 minute consultation today.