According to a 2018 study, one in six Americans now owns a smart speaker. As the technology for smart assistants like Amazon’s Alexa—and mobile assistants like Apple’s Siri—continues to improve, more consumers are bypassing the keyboards on their computers and phones when searching for information. The capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) are also expanding, and voice search presents a unique opportunity for marketers to craft responses that deliver exactly what consumers are looking for right in the moment—boosting the chance of making a sale. It’s a development that presents new challenges in search engine optimization (SEO).
In order to succeed in this new marketing frontier, it’s important that communications professionals learn when a voice application will be most effective, as well as the techniques that allow voice search to command their content results. Below, 12 members of Forbes Communications Council share their best strategies for optimizing content for voice search.
Members of Forbes Communications Council share techniques that allow voice search to command your content results.Photos courtesy of individual members.
1. Think About The User Experience First
Voice is certainly growing, but the number of brands that have voice skills with high levels of engagement is surprisingly low. Brands need to remember what makes a great consumer experience and not just check the box of having a voice application. If something can be accomplished faster by using a mobile or tablet device than by speaking into a smart assistant, it’s not needed as a voice application. – Keith Bendes, Float Hybrid
2. Create Conversational Content
I love the saying, “It’s not advertising if it works,” as we forget you don’t sell people things they already want. Voice search amplifies how any engaging content will make engaging conversation. Content should speak just as we speak and communicate. You need to create content that allows for a genuine connection with the user’s desires. This is the intrinsic value of voice search. – James A. Pearson, Spire Global
3. Get Semantic Ideas From Google
One of the primary ways you can optimize content for semantic search is to make sure your content answers the questions that your audience will be asking. To know what those questions are, type a question into Google and look for the “People also ask” section. In this section you’ll find dozens of new questions that you can answer in your content to be more relevant to voice searches. – John Leo Weber, ProjectManager.com
4. Focus On Mobile SEO
“Mobile-first indexing enabled”: Do you recall the notification sent from Google Webmaster? Since March 26, 2018, Google has been predominantly using the mobile version of your website content for indexing and ranking. What does this mean for the voice search? Think about it: The majority of voice searches take place on smartphones. To optimize for voice search results, focus on your mobile SEO rankings. – Kristaps Brencans, On The Map, Inc.
5. Reuse And Optimize Your Existing Content
Don’t create new content—reuse your existing key content and optimize it for voice search and audio use. This will help you fine tune your key messages and will give you “hear-ability” in a space that is less crowded than the others. It is also a chance to show consistency and integrity in your communications. – Svetlana Stavreva, IBM
6. Answer Questions In An Entertaining Fashion
Spoken voice searches tend to be far more conversational than keyword searches. Consequently, communications professionals need to adopt long-tail phrases and answer questions your prospects are likely to have. And don’t forget to entertain with that content. If you do, you stand a much better chance of ranking for these queries and having stakeholders interact with your content. – Eric Jones, WP Engine
7. Craft Helpful, Concise Responses
There is not much difference in the ways people search for the answers to their questions; they still use the same keywords, sometimes adding words like “where,” “how” or “what.” What is more important is that they still expect to receive the most complete result, so make sure your content is helpful, concise and made for people, not for Google robots. – Arina Katrycheva, actiTIME
8. Focus On Empathy And On-Page Mechanics
Optimizing for voice search, like any other kind of SEO, is about the one-two punch of empathy and on-page mechanics. The former allows you to step into your customers’ shoes to understand their pain points (and the questions they’ll search for). The latter involves, for example, building out comprehensive, easy-to-navigate FAQ and Q&A sections on your site that use those questions as headers. – Cameron Conaway, Solace
9. Read Your Content Out Loud
As you optimize content for voice search, you need to think about how your content sounds out loud. When a search is made using voice search, the user is wanting a quick answer, not a table, long paragraph or list of links. By focusing on how your content sounds out loud, you focus on content that is easy for users to read. – Jeff Grover, Best Company
10. Aggregate Search Data
Planning for potential voice command questions is as close as checking your own website’s search field data. Pull recent data and organize by potential questions being asked. Audit the various ways the same content is searched and answered to plan for your voice search content. Once you’ve launched, run the new search data the same way at least once a week to continuously add answers to your AI. – Heidi Baumgart, Event Source
11. Strive To Earn Google ‘Featured Snippet’ Positions
As Google continues to dominate our digital lives from a content perspective, it’s important to work diligently to create and optimize content so it is not only original and thought leading, but is also rewarded the “Featured snippet” position in search. When someone asks “What is the recipe for … ?” on their voice assistants, your content and business could be the first to be referenced and repeated. – Nicholas Putz, Quintessa Aesthetic Centers
12. Take The Time To Learn How It Works
Take a couple of hours to understand how AI-powered voice recognition works, just like you probably did for SEO. Clear topics, repetition of words, and good and neutral content will all come into play. Shorter and to-the-point stories will matter even more than for written or video content. Keep it simple until voice search graduates to the same level of sophistication as text search. – Isabelle Dumont, Arceo.ai