Voice Search and Virtual Assistants have arrived and how! They are the most discussed SEO trends recently and have a widespread impact on how people get their information these days. Most surveys predict that voice searches will constitute 50 percent of all searches by 2020. So in these changing times, there is a dire need for digital marketers to divert their effort into optimizing their content accordingly to make it voice search-friendly.
Tips to benefit from this Voice search and Virtual Assistants revolution
Your content has to be best friends with virtual assistants such as Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Bixby, and Google assistant. These are also regarded as the best customer service tools to boost digital marketing. Coming back to virtual assistants and the relationship of voice search, they deeply share a bond. Voice search is the preferred method essentially because it is simply convenient and saves the hassle of typing. It also gives us results 3.7 times faster than typing. Thus resulting in a win-win situation from all aspects.
Integrate long-tail keywords
We are used to the habit of cramming awkward keywords throughout the content but voice search has changed the course of that game. Searches through voice recognition are much longer, descriptive and have a tone of natural human conversation. Therefore the use of long-tail keywords or three to four-word phrases that are extremely specific to our product or service is essential to cope with the voice search era. These can help to keep the conversation going when the user is interacting with virtual assistants rather than leading it to a dead end.
Create efficient FAQ pages
In the context of keeping the conversation flowing, an FAQ page is the best way to include the question phrases naturally and provides a great opportunity to integrate all our target keywords on one page. You can also improve the internal linking structure by backlinking some blog posts in your answers. If the FAQ structured data markup is properly implemented it will make our content appropriate for rich results.
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Optimize your data for local SEO
There is an exponential increase in searches that end in the phrase “near me”. The stats explain that voice searches are 3 times more likely to be about local amenities or businesses. This implies that it is critical to enhancing your localized search engine optimization. Small local companies should ensure that they enlist as a business with the search engine and insert all the important information like brand name, working hours, location, etc. Adding your venture to Business Listings may improve your chances of getting a featured snippet on Google. To further your optimization use microdata and subheadings in your content to give the user a clearer idea about your business.
Semantic search
Voice search leads to the focus being shifted to semantic search, with the emergence of algorithms like Hummingbird and RankBrain which scan your data for intent rather than just keywords. Semantics is defined as the study of the relation between two words. This means that we need to give the topic much greater importance than the keywords and try to match the content to the user’s intent. We can do this by creating an overall comprehensive guide regarding one topic rather than several small and shallow articles stuffed with keywords. It’s okay to insert the informational, navigational and transactional keywords in this comprehensive content as the next step.
Create Google Actions or Alexa Skills
Google actions or Alexa skills are essentially software that expands the abilities of Google Assistant or Alexa to interact with your content or app if you have one. This helps the conversational back and forth of the virtual assistant making your content more relatable from the user’s perspective. This is extremely useful for news, podcasts or music-related searches. Structured data markup and accelerated mobile pages can help you claim your Action from the directory and gain content-related optimization. Chatbots like Siri and Alexa have algorithms that help them understand the user interface. Conversational Artificial intelligence and machine learning process make these chatbots extremely smart as they can improve and refine their responses based on daily activities, personal preferences, and previous searches.
To wrap up – Voice search and virtual assistants are here to stay
Ignoring the vastly cultivating segment of voice search and virtual assistants can cost a company heavily in this day and age. According to statistics “How to” questions are the type of questions that are most frequently asked to voice assistants. Using simple marketing strategies like incorporating answers to such ‘How to” questions related to your products or services can do wonders for your content optimization. Giving priority to user-oriented data created through the tools used by virtual assistants can also help you streamline your content. This enhances relations between the data and content as you can direct your content in the right direction with the help of the customer persona created through machine learning and predictive analysis. Therefore buckle up and get your voice search content optimization game strong in this growing era of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Assistants.