Let’s talk about ways you can use voice search marketing to your benefit as a small business in your marketing strategy.
This topic came up a lot more with the introduction of Siri, Cortana, and “hey Google”, but it deserves a revisit with AI on it’s way in.
The ability to use voice to search changed the way that we interacted with search.
Instead of Dentist + 81230 we moved to a more natural way of asking a computer for things like “Hey Siri, can you find a doctor near me?”
This change towards more natural speech also changed how to properly optimize your site for search.
What is Voice Search Optimization?
Voice Search Optimization is curating content on your website that allows voice-search questions to be answered easier.
Search has always wanted to deliver content that best serves the searches questions.
Voice search follows the same trend towards answering a question the best way it can for the searcher.
Voice search focuses more on answering a longer type of question to answer a more specific question.
What Are Long-Tail Keywords?
In terms of optimizing your site, there are short-tail and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are high-volume search terms like “Big Check” whereas long-tail keywords are phrases like “Where Can I Buy a Big Check”. Remember, Google and other search engines are tracking all searches to give us a better understanding of user-searches.
Today, the shorter keywords have a higher volume because of how we have been trained in search. Excess words have traditionally not been helpful in finding the proper service or product that we have been searching for.
“As we move into an age where voice search is more prevalent and AI search is more interactive, I’m predicting that we will see more long-tail keywords being used in search.”
Eric Hagelin
How To Optimize for Voice Search?
Get into the mindset of your customer for what they would be looking for about your business.
- FAQ Page (With Schema “FAQ”)
- Answer Customer Questions Within Content
- Utilize Google Business Profile FAQs
- Mobile Friendly Site
- Stay Up to Date: Best Practices
FAQ Page
Since the search algorithms are looking for answers to specific questions, create a page on your website that asks and answers your customers questions.
There is a specific schema markup for FAQ pages to help Google and other search engines to better understand what content is on a page.
** Follow the guidelines! **
The advantage of using a specific FAQ markup schema is that your competitors may not know about it.
Implementing a schema markup is a bit more advanced than a standard website installation, so take advantage!
Answer Customer Questions Within Content
Same idea here for the FAQ page, but done within your website pages.
For example, this page here has plenty of questions and answers, but is not specifically designated as an FAQ page.
Use the knowledge you have of your customers to help future clients.
When crafting up a home page or service page, answer client questions about your product or service naturally in paragraphs.
Utilize Google Business Profile FAQs
On your Google Business Profile, there is a section where customers can write questions to your company. This area is not often utilized by customers because it is a small part of the profile. Clients will go to your website contact or call to get questions answered.
You, as the business, can ask questions in this section and answer them. This helps provide content of specific questions and answers for voice search.
Mobile-Friendly Site
It’s not 2006 anymore, so I shouldn’t have to remind you that the site should be mobile-friendly.
Since voice searchers are going to be using their mobile device to ask a question, it’s important for your website to be user-friendly on any device.
We’ll take this a step further to make sure that they can get to answers easier.
Utilize anchor text to allow customers to easily navigate to the answer they are looking for.
Stay Up to Date: Best Practices
Now with AI, expect all digital marketing to speed up exponentially.
Stay up to date with best practices by following along with us.
Also follow along with these all-stars:
Will Voice Search Marketing Work For You?
I would rank this marketing technique high on your to-do list.
Get the SEO team on long-tail key phrases if they aren’t already.
A lot of the suggestions pointed out in this post are related to general best-seo practices with an emphasis in long-tail keyword phrases.
With AI evolving so quickly, having more human conversations on your website will benefit in the long run.
