VoiceSEO

Rhoda Samson

Google Assistant SEO Statistics, Trends, Fast Facts for Search Marketers

google assistant

The convenience brought about by saying, “Hey, Google” to perform a query has now turned science fiction into reality. We can find out what’s going on with the weather, send a text message, turn on the TV, or make a restaurant reservation all without looking up from your dinner plate.

Voice recognition technology has gone a long way since its inception, revolutionizing voice search through modern devices such as our Android-powered smartphones and smart speakers like Amazon’s Alexa. Pretty soon, we won’t have to type in commands or queries when asking our devices to do a task for us.

The role of Google Assistant has been key to advancing the voice search revolution. It has presented new opportunities for businesses to become competitive as Google opens more ways to rank in search results. If a user asks a question, you can be the one single answer Google Assistant can speak of when answering a query. Imagine the possibilities this can benefit your business.

A Brief History of Google Assistant

In the center of all this continuously advancing voice search technology is Google Assistant, the search engine giant’s very own virtual assistant that helps users find what they’re looking for through voice recognition technology. This artificial intelligence-powered search feature is what’s making the future happen now. However, it hasn’t always been this way.

Looking back, it’s clear that Google’s AI owes a lot of what it is now to at least two past services. The first and considered the oldest part of Google Assistant is Google Voice Search. It made its first appearance on Android-powered smartphones and the Chrome browser for computers back in June 2011. While the way it functioned was basic compared to today’s standards, the way we could give our phones voice commands sparked a massive change in the way we started to interact with technology.

But when Google Now entered the scene, it marked a massive shift in artificial intelligence. It was built on Google Voice Search and was code-named “Majel” after Majel Barrett, second wife the man behind Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, and voice actress of most onboard computer interfaces used throughout the series. This Easter egg clearly shows Google’s intent to achieve Star Trek’s utopian tech.

Google Now formed the framework of Google Assistant’s highly personalized service. It was first introduced in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which helped deliver your schedule, the weather, and other useful information through cards and notifications.

While Google Now was serving its purpose on Android smartphones, Google Assistant had its humble beginnings as an extra feature on Google’s Allo chat app. It was first tasked to pop up when needed or when invited. Its function was limited, but it wasn’t long before Google Assistant broke free of its limiting chains and had its first starring role in the original Google Pixel and Google Home. 

Google Assistant finally achieved superstar status when it arrived on smartphones starting from Android 6.0 Marshmallow and above back in 2017. This has put Google voice search on the map, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Google Assistant Statistics, Facts, and Trends for Your Voice Search SEO

1. Nearly 70 percent of requests to Google Assistant is delivered in natural language, and not the standard keywords typed in when performing a web search.

Voice search is changing the way we perform queries on the internet. What once was focused on keywords, has now evolved to asking questions or stating commands in a conversational and hands-free fashion. This kind of convenience is proving useful to users who are frequently on the go or multitaskers who always have their hands full.

This kind of search query is changing the way businesses rank on search engine results pages. So instead of ranking for specific keywords in standard search engine optimization, you’ll be taking a different route since your objective is to claim position zero, or what’s called the featured snippet section of search results.

A featured snippet is your ultimate goal if you want your business to appear in voice search results as the best answer to a query asked in natural language.

2. Based on a digital assistant IQ test made up of 800 questions, Google Assistant delivered the most accurate answers, garnering a score of 86 percent.

As part of an ongoing effort to better understand the practical use and the rise of voice as a computing input, regular tests are done to digital assistants and smart speakers. After focusing solely on smartphone-based digital assistants, it seems that Google Assistant got the better of Cortana, Siri, and an Alexa-powered iPhone.

In an impressive performance, Google Assistant understood all 800 questions under different categories. It convincingly showed that Google Assistant has the edge in the Local, Commerce, Navigation, and Information categories, but was outdone by Siri in the Command category.

One of the largest discrepancies in score was in the Information category, where Google Assistant achieved the highest percentage at 93 percent. This stems mostly from its “featured snippets” search function, which is the holy grail when it comes to voice search.

3. Active users have quadrupled since last year, and Google expects the Assistant to be available on one billion devices.

Google is continuously making improvements to the Assistant to make sure it’s evolving as AI technology advances. In 2018, it learned to speak new languages, expanded to new countries, and became smarter with all its new features that can help you throughout your day.

Google had a great 2018 when Google Home notched another record year after selling millions of Google Home family of devices during the holiday season. Google Assistant was also taught to speak new languages and understand local cultures, with 30 languages and 80 countries under its belt, a significant increase from eight languages and 14 countries the previous year.

4. Google Assistant is compatible with over 10,000 smart home devices from more than 1,600 popular brands.

The smart home trend is slowly picking up with Google Assistant now entering the fray. More people recognize the fact that devices powered by a virtual assistant can help run a smart home more efficiently. Just last year, the number of smart devices that have been connected to Google Assistant increased by 600 percent.

A total of 52 million Google Home devices were sold worldwide in 2018, and this number is expected to grow as the technology gets better and more devices become compatible with the actions it can execute.

5. Google Assistant has become a smarter conversationalist to better understand and respond to you naturally.

Google recently introduced the Continued Conversation setting, which allows you to have a natural conversation with the Assistant. It can also understand more complex requests, so you can ask about many things in one query such as, “What’s the weather like in Los Angeles and New York?”

As Google Assistant gets smarter, expect users to become more comfortable in adopting and adapting the technology. For this reason, businesses should shift their focus on Google Assistant voice search SEO.

6. Around 65 percent of people who own a Google Home can’t imagine going back to the days before they had a smart speaker, and 42 percent of them say voice-activated devices have become essential in their lives.

You can’t blame these folks who already had a taste of what’s it like to have Google Assistant to help them get through the day. Voice recognition technology has come a long way, and Google Assistant is the most advanced AI currently running these devices.

Despite these impressive numbers, the days of digital assistants are still in its infancy, and there’s a lot more to look forward to in terms of the development of the technology.

7. Google Assistant was the most popular voice assistant for shopping-related research at 24 percent.

Millennials are known to be the generation who mostly cater to the e-commerce industry. Beyond smart speakers, Alexa typically trails Google Assistant by a more considerable margin since it lacks a smartphone OS, but in this retail-specific sector, two-thirds of millennials in the study said that more than of their online shopping activity was done through Amazon.com.

So if you want your business to influence millennials to shop online using Google Assistant, you’ll need to optimize your website for Google voice search. Keep in mind that showing up in the knowledge graph alone may make your product or service discoverable, but it’s still going to miss big parts of your market. You should always aim for the featured snippet place so that you can come up as an answer in a specific query related in your industry.

8. Google Assistant actions hit a total of 4,253 in January 2019, which is up 2.5 times in the past year, but just 7.5 percent of Alexa’s total skills in the US.

Artificial intelligence plays a vital role in the development and growth of digital assistants. Google Assistant’s actions may have grown to 2.5 times last year compared to 2.2 growth for Alexa’s skills. However, Google Assistant’s action growth was taken from a much smaller base. As of January 2019, Google Actions in the US officially reached 4,253, which is about 7.5 percent of Alexa’s 56,750 skills.

Three of the 18 categories cover a third of all Google Actions listed. On top of the list is the Education and Reference category, accounting for 15 percent of all listed Actions. Games and Fun together with Kids and Family came in at 11 and 9 percent respectively. Surprisingly, the least popular were Local and Weather.

Weather makes sense since it’s considered as a narrow topic. Local is not all that narrow, but this is likely because only a few smaller organizations have tried to optimize for Google Assistant voice search.

9. 76 percent of parents say they typically use their smart speakers while doing other things, compared to 62 percent of non-parents.

It seems that parents find it more convenient to use Google Assistant-powered smart speakers than their non-parent counterparts. Parents generally have their hands full when tending to everything they need to do at home while looking after their kids. It’s a tough job, but smart speakers can help make their lives easier.

Running the kitchen can be one of the most difficult to manage while taking care of children. A Google Home device can help them do other tasks while preparing a meal. Parents can set a timer and have Google Assistant notify them if they need to take something out of the oven. In a time-sensitive and busy place like the kitchen, Google Assistant can prove to be invaluable when kids are around.

10. Duplex is set to change the game as being the smartest chatbot there is.

Google is now moving a step forward in upgrading its artificial intelligence technology with Duplex, an extension of Google Assistant that’s able to carry out natural conversations by mimicking the human voice, including fillers, common phrases, intonation, and response latency to exactly sound like you’re speaking to a real person.

While Duplex can autonomously carry out a conversation, it can also recognize situations where it cannot complete a task and sends out a signal to a human operator to finish it. Duplex is currently in development and had a limited release in 2018. During the presentation, Pixel users can call to schedule an appointment at the salon or book a restaurant reservation as easy as asking Google Assistant.

Conclusion

Google Assistant has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a virtual assistant within a chat app. It continues to thrive in its use and audience by bringing its smart design to different fronts. Google Assistant is built into the Android OS of most modern devices, making it easily more accessible by Google’s existing audience.

The real value of Google’s hardware is to provide a platform for Google to develop and deploy its artificial intelligence technology and allow for more ways to serve ads. Businesses should start taking advantage of this opportunity and find the best partner that could ramp up their Google Assistant SEO efforts to appear on the best answer result.

The need for a partner that knows how to do it right is vital for your business’ success when considering voice search, and this is where Voice SEO comes in. Voice SEO is run by a team of skilled experts who can help you stay competitive in your industry when using Google Assistant. You’ll be able to appear in voice searches through specific queries that involve your product or service, which would substantially grow your business.

How to Optimize Your Voice SEO for the Google Local Three-Pack

How to Optimize Your Voice SEO for the Google Local Three-Pack

If you have a business in a particular community, being part of the Google Local Three-Pack can boost your overall online presence. Also called Map or Snack Pack, the local pack is the section that you see on the first page of search results, right below the search box. You’ll commonly encounter this when you’re searching for a business establishment in a specific area. 

As its name suggests, the Google Local Three-Pack lists the top three local businesses that match a user’s query in terms of proximity to the searcher’s location.

Having your business on the local pack can be a huge thing. It means that Google thinks your website is the most relevant to what people in your community are looking for, and therefore, should get the prime spot in local business listings. 

This position inside the local three-pack not only makes your business visible to internet users, but it also sends them signals that your business has a high authority with Google. As a result, you get more clicks and traffic to your website than competing businesses that appear outside of the Google local three-pack. 

Look at these supporting statistics about local search results:

  • 92% of online users pick businesses on the first page of local search results, according to SEO Expert. In comparison, Moz says there are only 8% clicks on “More local results” or “More places” among users of local search.
  • 72% of people who perform a local search end up visiting a store that’s within 5 miles of their location. In addition, 86% of people use Google Maps to locate a business. (Social Media Today)

At the rate or speed that local mobile search on Google is growing, optimizing your website to rank in Google’s local three-pack can give good mileage to your business. This will ensure that your business will come up at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) each time someone makes a local or “near me” search. 

How does Google determine local ranking? 

For you to show up in local search results, you need to comply with three requirements that Google uses to rank businesses.

► Relevance

Google wants you to provide detailed and complete information about your business so that it can make the closest match between your listing and user queries.

► Distance

Location is another major factor that helps Google decide whether or not to display your business in local results. What Google does is that it takes into account where your business is located based on a specific area included in the user’s search or based on what’s known about the user’s location.

► Prominence

Google also looks at the popularity of a business when selecting local businesses for its search results. Brands or places that are familiar to many people may get a prominent position in local search results. The same goes for businesses that get credited with links, positive reviews, or high rating scores across digital channels. These factors, along with a strong SEO performance, can put your business in front of users of local search.

How to Optimize Your Voice SEO for the Google Local Three-Pack

Voice search is a fast-rising aspect in organic search, as these numbers from Hubspot indicate:

  • As of January 2018, voice searches totaled approximately 1 billion per month.
  • 65% of consumers in the 25- to 49-year-old age range speak to their voice-enabled devices at least once a day.
  • By 2020, 50% of all online searches will be done via voice search.
  • By 2022, voice search is forecasted to be worth $40 billion.

Given how prevalent voice search is at the moment—and how it’s poised to get more mainstream in the near future— it’s only right that you turn to voice search to get your business to rank on Google’s elite local pack.

Through voice search SEO services, you can be more strategic in setting up and delivering your business listing to make it more noticeable by Google as well as by your target audience.

Here, we share some must-do strategies to help you make it to Google’s top three local listings.

1. Create a Google My Business page for your company

This is the first step to making your business searchable for Google users. It involves creating your Google My Business (GMB) profile so that customers will have all the important information about your business.

By having a listing on Google My Business, you’re making your company details available for voice assistants to access from search engines, maps, and other online databases.

Here’s what your Google My Business listing should contain:

  • Business name
  • Business category
  • Business address
  • Business telephone number
  • Business logo
  • Photos of your business
  • Clickable website, call, and direction buttons
  • Popular times
  • Hours of operation
  • User ratings or reviews

2. Optimize your business listings

An optimized business listing is one that’s properly set up and managed. Here’s how you can do it:

  • Ensure the accuracy and consistency of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) across the web. During the process of creating your Google My Business profile, you’ll be brought to a map page where you’ll be entering your business information. Whatever information you put here should be the same as what you provide on your website and other directory websites such as Yelp and Foursquare.
  • Once you’ve filled in your business information, make sure that you keep it as up to date. The more current your information is, the more useful your website will be for your online prospects. It’s also an effective way to provide the best possible user experience for your prospective customers.
  • Include high-quality images to cater to mobile users. Customers will definitely appreciate seeing clear pictures of your store or product even if they’re only looking at them from the small screen of their mobile device. Ultimately, this can help you attract more foot traffic to your business.

3. Manage and respond to reviews

We’ve mentioned that Google uses prominence as a factor in determining which businesses to display in local listings, but to set the record straight, being the largest, most popular, or most visited in your area isn’t the only yardstick that makes your business qualified.

Whenever customers leave favorable feedback about your business on online reviews, Google takes it into account and uses it to enhance your prominence as a local business. That said, you should devote time to getting 5-star reviews by being responsive to customers’ queries, requests, or feedback promptly. As you know, happy customers are the best brand ambassadors you could ever have.

Over time, as positive reviews keep coming for your business, voice search will more likely show your listing whenever someone asks for the best local business or the best local product.

4. Monitor your GMB information

You must claim and verify your GMB listing. Otherwise, anyone can make unwanted or unintentional changes to it without you knowing it by clicking the “Suggest an edit” button. Once the changes go live, the discrepancies in your business information or business citations may affect your local SEO rankings.

Fortunately, you can fix the changes you didn’t make by editing your business listing on Google although the more ideal practice is to claim your listing from the outset and to keep it always updated.

5. Use geo-phrases in your keywords

If your business is ranking organically, but not locally, the problem may lie on the keywords that you’re using. Since voice users are including location-based phrases in their queries, you’ll need to optimize your business listing with geo-related keywords or explicit locations. 

The reason for this is that SEO for local rankings depend heavily on factors such as proximity, NAPs, and other relevant categories on GMB listing. 

And with Google reporting that ”near me now” searches have grown by 150% over the last two years, ensuring that you do this properly is critical. Here’s how you can optimize for those types of highly specific searches:

  • Instead of just labeling your business with generic terms like “salad shop,” make sure to add keywords that voice searchers would typically use these days, such as “organic” or “locavore” around your product descriptions.
  • Instead of placing a zipcode or a state in your address, include the name of the street and the city in your location information as it helps Google come up with more relevant results that match hyper-specific queries from users.
  • Add in the hours when your store opens and closes, so your business can show up at the exact time that people are searching for nearby places or products.

6. Cultivate locally relevant links for higher online visibility

As with traditional SEO where you have to link to high authority pages, you need to build links to rank in voice search—this time focusing on links that are relevant to your local business. Here are some ideas for building links to your local business:

Links from local business partners—You can reach out to owners of companies that you do business with, asking them to include a link from their blog or webpages to your website. Their business may be different from yours, but as long as they can establish relevant connections between your businesses, you’ll be gaining valuable links to your site.

Links from local event partners—Being a participant or sponsor in local events also allows you to get links to your website. Any blog or announcement coming from the organizer or your event partners about the event can include links to your website.

Links from local industry resources and directories—Depending on your industry, you could look for associations that organize a list of local businesses in a particular area. Make sure that you get your business listed in their directories, especially the free ones. 

The bottom line here is that through local link building, you can become more active or visible in your area. Plus, with local organizations promoting and linking to your site, the quantity of your online exposure automatically increases. This can then help you get on the radar of Google for its local pack rankings.

7. Adhere to on-page SEO requirements

Website and webpage optimization is what helps your business rank in local search results, and paying attention to this checklist can boost your voice SEO and get your business found online.

  • Title Tags—Good title tags contain keywords for your website pages, which search engines use to identify what your page is all about. The tag should not exceed 55 characters, or the title for that page might appear cut off once published. There’s also no need to include stop words like “the” or ‘is” in your title tags.
     
  • Meta Description—This refers to the text that users see below your title tag and your website URL. Unlike title tags, the meta description you provide has more use for searchers than for search engines. If your meta description is concise and enticing enough, the more likely that users will click through to your page.
  • Header Tags—These are codes that define the structural makeup of your webpages. Aside from helping search engines understand how your text flows, header tags are also where you include keywords to optimize your headings and subheadings.
  • Alt Tags—You should use alt tags to describe images on your website to provide context to Google regarding their relevance to the content of your webpage. Ideally, your alt tags should include local keywords that are also found on the title of the page.
  • Internal Links—These links connect different pages of your website to one another. Internal linking requires that you build lots of quality content, so you’ll have multiple pages that can potentially rank on Google search.
  • Minimize Flash—Flash is the technology that adds animation to your content, but sadly, these animations are giving search engines a harder time trying to understand the content of your website. To optimize your website, you should minimize or eliminate the use of Flash.
  • Robots.txt and Sitemap Files—These two files help search engines locate your website, so without these files or if these files aren’t up to date, Google will not be able to index your content nor will they be able to include your website in the search results.
  • 301 Redirects—SEO algorithms require the presence of “www” at the beginning of your website address. Without this, traffic to your site might not be directed properly. Ask your website hosting company to set up a 301 redirect, so that visitors will be able to land on your website whether they type “www” to browse your site.
  • Images and Video—Images, video, and multimedia are getting more traction these days among content consumers, so you should use more of them to educate and engage your target market.
  • Readable URLs—Search engines and their users also turn to URLs to identify what a page is all about. You should optimize your URLs and use your primary keywords. Poorly crafted URLs might discourage people from clicking through to your webpages, or search engines from ranking your site.

Rank Your Local Business on the Google Three Pack

Today, consumers are highly dependent on search engines to help them find information, products, places, or businesses online. As a way of rewarding users, search engines are constantly improving the way their service works.

Now that the focus has shifted to voice search, the challenge for your business is to be where most of the search users—none other than the Google Local Three Pack. By optimizing your voice SEO, it will be easier for you to land in this highly coveted ranking, get your business discovered, and lead local audiences toward your website to further engage with them.

How to Design Your Content Marketing Strategy for Voice Search

Content Marketing Strategy

Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google Assistant—nowadays, accessibility is made simple with the use of your voice. One of the most utilized ways for voice-activated digital assistants is for search. In 2016, voice search on Google was at 20% of the total queries on a mobile app, while over at Baidu, one in 10 searches was reportedly made through speech.

These percentages are only expected to go up, as the technologies mentioned above continue to improve in terms of accuracy and reliability—thanks to natural language processing and machine learning. The more people use these assistants, the more training data they acquire, which makes them more powerful with every use. Google Assistant reportedly now has an accuracy of 92%.

According to MindMeld’s 2016 Intelligent Voice Assistants Research Report, people use voice for the following reasons:

  • 61%: hands and vision are occupied 
  • 30%: to get results faster
  • 24%: when typing is awkward on the device
  • 22%: because it is trendy and fun
  • 12%: to avoid convoluted menus
  • 1%: other reasons

Despite the prominence of voice search, content marketers haven’t completely embraced it, perhaps due to a lack of understanding of its implications to search optimization. However, it is true that voice search is influencing SEO, and since content marketing is highly connected to SEO, it is also changing the rules of content production in some way.

SEO aims to put your page on the first page of SERPs, but with the advent of voice search, search engines have been profoundly dictating how content should be structured, and this is evident in the appearance of featured snippets. In voice search, content ranking within the featured snippet often gets a more significant share of the traffic compared to relevant but not on featured snippet results.

The Launch of Hummingbird

Changes to how search engines process and evaluate content have always been drastic; that is why some of the older metrics of success aren’t as reliable anymore. When Google launched the Hummingbird update in 2013, it became apparent that the company believes that the future of search is voice. The update focused on semantic analysis to determine the intent behind the search, laying the foundation for voice search.

However, not only did it work to understand what was being asked based on the words and phrases, but it learned the speech patterns and accent, as well. By understanding user intent, it is now possible to search using the language—words and syntax—that is natural to the user.

In addition to Hummingbird, Google also launched the Rankbrain system in 2015. This system helped it better understand and respond to queries and index and rank content. Rankbrain also uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to think like how a person would and comprehend the intent behind the queries without search explicitly stating them. This allowed Google to provide more relevant results.

Both systems also allowed Google to look beyond the keyword strings and instead evaluate context, understand search intent, and deliver results that actually answer questions, not just match keywords to webpages.

Top Content Marketing Strategies for Voice Search

Outside of search intent, optimizing content to work with voice search technology is also necessary. Failure to do so could result in lower rankings or being penalized. Here are a few suggestions on how you can update and improve your content for voice search:

1. Develop relevant content with search intent in mind

There is a noticeable difference in typing a search query versus speaking it out. For one, users have been programmed to type search keywords in sort of a robotic way, using non-conversational keywords. But with better voice technology, it’s time for marketers to focus on search intent and natural language context because that’s the direction Google is heading.

Another content strategy to adapt is to map consumers’ questions onto various points of their journey, so your brand is present at every stage, and you can directly address their needs every time. By doing this, your brand will create a thematic depth that Google will know and identify. This can also give you brand authority to influence actions later in the consumer journey. Here’s an example:

  • Awareness:  What’s the best brand of paper towel?
  • Consideration: What is more durable: Scott or Bounty?
  • Decision: How much is Bounty?

Aside from these, you can also utilize these content types based on intent that work well for voice search optimization:

Informational (guides, how-tos)

Search engines are mainly used to seek information, or when someone has a question that needs an answer. This may not immediately lead to a sale, but it’s an opportunity to engage with potential customers.

Navigational (store location, services, press release, customer service)

When a query is made using keywords that include a company’s brand name, it is likely that a user is already familiar with the company but needs help with navigation to their desired page.

Transactional (video, information, comparison, product stories)

These are searches that use keywords that include specific product names in association with buying and the searcher is ready to make a purchase.

Commercial (reviews)

Commercials are a hybrid of informational and transactional intent. The searcher is on the verge of making a purchase but is also looking for information to come up with a decision.

Investigational

According to Moz founder Rand Fishkin, investigational “straddles the line between pure research and commercial intent… They’re not directly transactional, and may never result in an exchange of goods, services, or monies, but they’re not purely informational either.”

To help you develop content based on intent, you can use TextOptimizer, which helps in researching and optimizing content using semantic analysis. It can do the following for you:

  • Run queries in Google which then returns the best snippets based on what it thinks satisfies each query; this way, you can analyze the snippets as well as the possible summary of the topic.

Generate related terms, categories, and questions that Google believes are the best answers to the query through semantic analysis.

Help you figure out how to better use words and questions in your content to build a more relevant context that will match Google’s expectations for better page rank.

2. Answer your customers’ questions

Most voice searches start with the usual 5W + H questions, and even though natural language processing is becoming more common, there are still notable differences between the way voice searches are phrased and traditional ones. Since the answers can easily be isolated on one web page, a Frequently Asked Questions page (FAQ) can be set up to provide an immediate response.

Aside from creating a detailed, keyword-friendly FAQ page, you can also do Q&A content as blog posts. Consider the most common and important questions that customers are asking then build an informational page around it. Each part of the FAQ can be repurposed this way, and by targeting the right keywords, it will help improve your search results.

Creating these blog posts can also help your content get into Google’s “People Also Ask” section, which users click to explore a topic further. To find these critical questions, you may reach out to your customer support and sales teams.

There are tools that you can utilize to do this strategy. AnswerThePublic.com is a free tool that provides a variety of questions related to one keyword. Google Suggest, or the drop-down list of popular terms and queries that appears as a user types the query, can also be used to do this.

3. Produce informative video content

Research suggests that by 2020,  82% of consumer internet traffic will be for videos, thus making it an essential part of search strategy, including voice. It increases the convenience factor when looking for information, and it’s a great way to tell the brand’s story.

Natural language drives voice search as well as video content. This shared detail means that it is likely that video results will show up more on SERPs if marketers put effort into it. Google has already rolled out the video featured snippet feature wherein it pulls out a relevant section of the video to the search query, making video an integral strategy in answering voice search queries.

Repurposing content is one of the ways to leverage video content for voice search. When you’ve already created FAQs, Q&A, and blog posts, you can then turn it into explainer videos that share information to educate and explain visually. This can be useful for conversion.

Here are additional ways to use video for your marketing strategy:

  • Transcribe the videos, include search phrases, and use it to bolster SEO.
  • Identify the most valuable questions, identify the keywords within these questions, and adjust bids for these keywords.
  • Turn long videos into short pieces, each speaking specifically to one question, idea, or interest.
  • Incorporate strong meta-descriptions and titles that target your video distribution strategy.
  • Tag and insert description using long-form keywords to relevant areas of the video.

4. Develop more local content

According to a study by BrightLocal, around 58% of consumers have used voice to find local business information between 2017 and 2018. Needless to say, voice search has put the focus on a well-optimized local SEO strategy. It is necessary to incorporate localization into your broader SEO strategy to boost visibility and make it easy for customers to locate you.

An easy way to improve localization is to include your business’ location and contact information in a conspicuous place, such as the header or footer of every web page, so visitors can easily find it. You can also include an online contact form.

Local searches work in two ways: having the location explicitly named in the search or using the searcher’s location and looking for the nearest relevant establishment to that location. The latter is quite common, and where your Google My Business listing can come in handy.

A complete and accurate GMB profile ensures that every bit of detail that a prospect or existing customer would want to know is available. Add as many pieces of content as you want and make sure all of your local listings are optimized for direct-answer type information.

Some of the information you need to fill or take note of include the following:

  • name, address, and phone number (NAP)
  • a business email associated with the website (or [email protected])
  • a phone number with area code
  • location information that is also on your website, GMB listing, and other local business directories
  • high-quality photos of your location and the products/services offered
  • relevant categories of the business
  • fully describe your offerings using the introduction field

Another thing worth noting about local voice search is that from over a billion voice searches done in a month, 40% were mobile searches that had local intent. Mobile dominance is nothing new, but it’s certainly something to consider when it comes to optimization for local content. 

5. Improve readability

Quality content is useless if no one is reading it. Being informative doesn’t equate boring, and there are ways that you can make your content more readable so that visitors can extract the details they need. When it comes to voice SEO, improving readability means thinking and writing like your target audience or customer.

This means you should keep it simple and clear, and drop the jargon. According to research, the average voice search result should be written at a 9th-grade reading level, which means avoiding content heavy with buzzwords that no one uses in a real-life discussion. Keep your terms and phrases as close as possible to a natural conversation so you can increase search engine visibility.

Most readers also tend to scan before reading a blog or article from top to bottom, so it would be useful to include subheadings, bullet points, and tables to increase the chance that they’ll read the whole piece. It is also easier for search engines to understand the content with these in place.

In addition, take advantage of these tips, resources, and tools:

  • Webfx can grade readability using indicators such as the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease, Gunning Fog Score, and Automated Readability Index.
  • Create short sentences (average of 10 words) and structure using short paragraphs (2–3 sentences).
  • Add sections that focus on an immediate need for answers like glossaries and Q&A pages.

Prepare for the Future of Search Today!

Technology will keep on evolving for years to come. In terms of SEO, nothing is set in stone. Keeping up with the voice search revolution is not just about updating your SEO strategy, but as part of it, businesses should also be updating their content marketing strategy. Make sure to monitor trends and updates, so you can make the necessary adjustments that will benefit your company.

How to Hire the Right Voice Search SEO Agency

How to Hire the Right Voice Search SEO Agency

They may not be as sophisticated as J.A.R.V.I.S. or F.R.I.D.A.Y. (yet) but voice-operated machines have come a long way since we were introduced to SIRI. No longer fumbling in word recognition, voice search has evolved from just knowing the words to knowing the intent of the user asking.

In a recent study some 53 million people now own at least one smart speaker in their household. This phenomenal growth of voice-activated gadgetry is reshaping consumer behavior by the daily.

Voice search is essentially speech recognition technology. You literally talk to your phone or smart speakers and ask it whatever question itches your mind and you get an answer! According to ComScore, searches are more likely voice generated than typed by 2020.

These items are now the center of the household and consumers prefer talking to their voice-activated virtual assistants instead of having to type in their searches or inquiries. Consumers are also more akin to this new technology as it makes life easier and it makes it seem that you’re only talking to a friend.

This new “relationship” of human and machine is a doorway for brands to step in as part of the experience. You would want to optimize for local searches and use structured data so Google would rank you high. But how?

To do this, it is best to hire a voice search optimization company who can ensure better traffic for your website and making sure you appear on the top search results for these voice search inquiries. We have listed a couple of ways on how voice search optimization can help you.

How Voice Search Optimization Can Help Your Business

They Do the Digging

Like any other business, you have to be wary of your competitors. By having a good voice search optimization company in hand, you have a specific group who would do just that for you. They can research on what keywords your competitors use to get to top search results and develop a plan on how to eclipse them. Overtime, by knowing your competitors, your voice search optimization company can better construct campaigns that are sure to deliver the best results for your company.

They Study You Too

A little introspection goes a long way. A good agency knows that it is imperative that they research on the company they are working for to develop tailored strategies. A voice search optimization agency will want to know historical data on how you have run your company’s marketing approach in the past and your goals for the future in order to create the apt campaign that will ultimately be beneficial for your company.

They Know the Words

Specifically, keywords. The most important factor in creating an effective voice search optimization campaign is knowing the top keywords that will land you on the top results. A good voice search SEO agency will research not only keywords but phrases that are most likely spoken by voice search users. Developments in speech recognition have been astronomical that it has become an integral part of life by a huge chunk of the population (millennials). An agency should be adept in this field because using the proper key phrases drives traffic to your site and create potential clients for your business.

They Know How to Use Those Words

In line with knowing key phrases, any voice search optimization agency knows that creating content around keywords will rank you to better search result standing. A voice SEO agency will create valuable content around the topic using key phrases to rank higher in Google search result.

They Will Optimize Content

Another crucial task that a voice SEO agency can do for you is optimizing content that’s already there. Typed inquiries may yield different results from spoken questions and by having an agency who can tailor the content you already have to pop up in voice-search results is going to be good for your business.

They Will Enhance Your Pages

It’s in the name, a voice search optimization company’s general task is to optimize your site. This means creating content that will land you on position zero in a voice search result through carefully crafted campaigns backed by extensive research.

Why Hire a Voice Search SEO Agency?

Online presence is one important facet of running a business in this day and age—and a huge important facet at that. Having someone who can professionally handle all things online for you gets a chunk of the work off your plate and lets you focus on other aspects of your business.

Aside from what a voice SEO firm can do for you, there are also other benefits you might not have thought of in hiring one. Above, we have listed the things that a good voice search SEO agency will do for you, with those in mind, here are the benefits you get when you find and hire the best voice SEO company for you:

You Get Time Back

Imagine having to learn algorithms and analytics on top of running a business, daunting, right? But by hiring a reliable voice search SEO services relieves you of all that technicalities. You can use the time you would use in crafting content, scouring competitors’ strategies and keywords, and learning a whole new element of running a business to actually running your business. Another plus side, you can use that time for your personal life!

Your Online Presence is Taken Cared for

With more and more people relying on the internet for just about everything, your online presence is of utmost importance. Your site needs to have a good user interface, your multiple social media accounts must be updated and go with what’s trending, and overall, your presence needs to be relatable and optimized—all of which you can get by hiring a reputable voice search optimization agency who knows their stuff. Imaging doing this by yourself!

Your Rankings Will Rise

Increased site traffic translates to, ultimately, potential revenue. Working with a voice SEO agency helps you rank better, if not, the best, in voice search results which equates to higher chances of landing would-be clients for your business. With tons of competition, a voice optimized site gives you a significant lead.

What Makes a Great Voice Search SEO Agency?

Say you’re sold on the idea of hiring a voice search optimization agency, you know what they do and what they can do for you—but what makes a great voice SEO agency? Should they have shiny voice SEO proposal promising you overnight success? Should they use state-of-the-art marketing pitches to solidify themselves as the best agency to do your digital needs for you? Should a great voice search SEO agency come in cheap? Are you supposed to get the one nearest to you?

If these questions bother you then fret not. We’ve gathered several qualities you should look for before signing a partnership.

They keep it real.

Have you ever met agencies hauling in flashy presentations and then falling flat on their promise? Well, a great voice SEO agency will give you no peacocking, no overpromising, and just setting you up with realistic goals followed with achievable results.

They do a complete voice SEO audit for your business website.

A great voice search SEO agency will do their homework without having to ask them to. They are expected to do an audit to better understand your current standing in voice search results.

They take time to know you.

Aside from your online semantics, they also take the time to learn about your business and industry, your customers, and your sales strategy.

They take time to know your competition.

What makes a great voice search SEO agency is the same as what they will do for your company. One of their most important jobs is to know your competition and devise a strategy on how to outrank them with results.

They provide you with different on-page voice SEO recommendations.

This refers to all the things you can do on your website to help you rank better in searches. It can be Meta Descriptions, Meta Tags, Body Tags, URL structure, and the likes. A good voice search agency can and will do this for you.

They don’t jump to highly competitive keywords with long tail keywords.

A good agency knows that there’s a need to find relevant and less competitive long-tail keywords on a specific topic in order to appear organically on voice searches.

They have good history.

There is a certain authority that comes with age. As with a good voice search optimization agency, you would want someone who knows the ins and outs of the industry. Client retention rate is important because it tells you that the agency has been working pretty well. It is also notable that even when you find a few bad reviews online targeting an agency you’re already set in hiring, don’t let it be a deterrent. Just remember to give your hunt for the best agency due diligence by researching.

They communicate well.

It only makes sense that you should go for an agency who communicates well since their primary role in your business is communicating with users via content. Reputable voice SEO agencies respond timely when you shoot them an inquiry whether via their website’s contact form, phone, or email. One more thing to look for is how well an agency communicates their pricing. If a voice SEO agency can comfortable lay out their pricing means they’re not hiding surprise fees for you.

How Do You Find the Voice Search SEO Agency Fit for You?

Do a quick Google search and you’ll find a multitude of voice search optimization agencies offering different kinds of services claiming to be beneficial to your company—but it’s not always the case. There are some good SEO agencies who haven’t yet adopted voice search optimization in their services. There are also agencies that have a wide array of services that they’ve spread themselves too thin. So like Goldilocks, you need to find the porridge that’s just right.

It needs to be reiterated that you shouldn’t just jump right into signing a contact with the first agency you see. We highly recommend following these steps on how to find the voice search SEO agency that’s best for your company.

Know what you need

It’s best to know what you need before finding someone to hire. Whether it be for just one campaign, a social media promotion, voice search SEO services, or a total website overhaul, knowing what you need and clearly setting your goals tailor fits what you will find. If you don’t know which area you need help on, you can get a digital marketing analysis done for you and a good agency would determine it for you.

List the data you want to track

Research, again, plays a big role in finding the best voice SEO agency for your business. Be sure to ask if the agency you’re talking to can track measurable data such as phone calls, site visits, click throughs, and many more. This means that the solutions they will concoct for you have basis and uniquely yours. You wouldn’t want a baseless strategy pulled from thin air.

Back-check on a prospective voice SEO agency

If you have honed in on a couple of agencies already, and you’re ready to sift through the options, a great way to get unbiased thoughts about them is by looking through reviews and testimonials online. A simple online search will let you stumble upon valuable critique from their previous clients. Another avenue you can take for reviews is by asking the agency itself to submit case studies and/or by requesting reference that will vouch for their capacity as a voice search optimization agency.

Stay away from “black hat” agencies

Black hat voice SEO agencies are firms that cheat the system. They buy a ton of links from useless websites, they use bots to generate views, they steal content from other sites, and use other dirty tactics to generate traffic. All of these methods get you a one-way ticket to getting a Google penalty.

Never trust anything that promises overnight success. The rule of thumb is, if they insist on retaining copyrights on all materials created for you—stay away. If you agree to this, they can easily destroy your online presence content, design, and strategy-wise.

Take them for a test run

Before signing anything, it is best to schedule a consultation whether online or in person with your shortlisted agency. The important thing is that you get a feel of how the voice SEO firm will handle your request.

Are they thoughtful enough that they conducted a respectable amount of research on your company? How do they come across to you? Do you think you will be able to work with this agency for the long haul? Important questions you can get a bearing on if you get a feel on how they work without cashing anything out just yet.

Set your voice search SEO budget

As with any venture, setting a budget aside is a must. Keeping in mind all these tips lets you know what you’re paying for but you should also define, and be clear early on, how much you are willing to pay. Refer back to the first tip in creating your budget—what is the amount you can and are willing to set to achieve your goal. Now of course, that doesn’t automatically mean splurging.

Many voice SEO agencies have packaged deals and price ranges you can always choose from. You can also check if they have a pay-per-month scheme that you can avail.

Voice Search is a Game Changer

It’s a cliché, but change really is constant. The way users search for answers has rapidly evolved from typing to speaking and businesses should keep up. Appearing on position zero is no longer achievable by just using a bunch of popular keywords and hoping it will land. Carefully understanding key phrases, much like how a person will phrase a question is needed to rank better in search results.

Your business’ significance in this day and age heavily relies on your online presence and relatability to the majority of consumers. Ergo, finding the best voice search optimization agency that will provide you with the correct campaign backed by research is definitely going to be beneficial to your company in the long run.

Optimizing your content to cater to voice searches means that there’s a higher chance that your site is where a voice-operated assistant will lead the user. Research shows that ranking high gets you a high bump in traffic which translates to increased potential revenues!

With so many agencies adopting this new service, it’s not uncommon to be confused on who to get for your business. Just keep in mind these tips and tricks and you should be all set.

How to Boost Your Domain Authority for Voice Search SEO

How to Boost Your Domain Authority for Voice Search SEO

According to a study by Backlinko, the average Domain Authority (DA) of voice search results is almost 77. The reason is simple: voice search results must be accurate, coming from a source trusted by users and search engines alike—and more often than not, these sources have high DAs. This makes DA rating essential for voice search SEO.

SEO software company Moz developed this rating system. DA can be described as a search engine ranking score that predicts a website’s ability to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). The score ranges from one to 100, with a higher rating meaning better chances of ranking high. 

Is Domain Authority Important for Voice SEO?

From a search engine perspective, DA is like a measurement of a website’s reputation as a thought leader. While DA is not a ranking factor per se, it is a good way to gauge how your site measures up and what its chances of ranking are. According to Moz, there are over 40 factors in determining the DA, including root domains and several inbound links.

DA improvement is often used by sites as a complementary effort for their SEO strategy. It can be utilized as a comparison between your website and your competitors’. You want your site to have better DA because it means better SERPs ranking, and therefore, better visibility. If you’re lucky—and with a bit more effort—you can even hit Feature Snippets and own voice search.

How to Boost Your Domain Authority

Even though DA does not heavily influence rankings, you’d want to explore different ways on how you can pull up your SERP rankings even higher, until such time that you have optimized your content to meet the position zero requirements. 

Audit your site’s internal and external links to get rid of bad links

Backlinks gathered from your link building strategy is still one of the leading ranking factors, but it only works if you have quality links. Backlinks from high domain or page authority sites help your overall trustworthiness. Both internal and external links are essential to Google, as it prefers a variety of link profiles from high-authority sites.  

A link profile is an overall assessment of all your inbound links. It looks at the total number of links, quality (or spamminess), assortment, and many others. Search engines will look at your link profile to understand how it relates to other websites. That is why you should audit your link profile now and then, and search for broken, harmful, or toxic backlinks that are hurting your domain authority. 

A few SEO tools can help you analyze your link profile and understand its overall makeup. There’s SEMrush Backlink Checker and Moz’s Link Explorer which both measure your link profile’s health. Meanwhile, Google’s Disavow Tool can help you get rid of poor or undesirable links from your website to strengthen link profile. 

Manually, you can also choose to control where to place your internal links. Never automate this step. It’s better to go through all of your old content and add links between pages on the site if needed. Don’t mix up your anchor text, as well. 

Speed up your site

Internet speeds are already lightning fast in many parts of the globe, that’s why most users now have become more impatient, especially when the page they are visiting is loading too slowly. Poor loading speeds can result in your visitor leaving the site, increasing bounce rate and affecting conversions. 

The ideal page load time for websites is around 3 seconds, and there are many ways that you can optimize loading speeds like being picky with your hosting service or getting a server with quicker response time. Google also has a PageSpeed tool that you can use to not only analyze your site speed but also help identify ways you can make it faster to improve user experience.

Create linkable content

Engagement metrics like total traffic, time on site, bounce rate, and return visits are also essential to your search engine ranking and, in turn, DA. To boost your engagement, you must attract and engage with your audience.This can easily be done with high-quality content. Compelling content can also attract organic backlinks.

You need to publish high-value content regularly and consistently. High-quality content simply means one that is informative, well-written, and relevant to your brand and target audience. When you have good content, authoritative sites would be inclined to link to it, and people would start sharing your post around−helping increase its exposure. Here are a few ways to do it.

Produce extensive resource articles

Resource articles cover everything you need to know about a particular topic. Lengthy pieces of content like these are packed with information that is usually linked out to other useful content. Meanwhile, you can do link building by reaching out to industry blogs, which is significant in this case because you’d want other authoritative sites to link your resource articles, too. 

Create how-to articles

Aside from resource articles, another informative type of content that you can utilize to build links is the how-tos. Not only are they useful in earning inbound links, but they are also more likely to appear as a result of voice search. 

If your content is easily discoverable (or is ranking high, thanks to your SEO efforts), other sites can link the site on their own content as reference. You’d also want your content to be the Featured Snippet that smart assistants would push to its user, especially since there are no pages 2 or 3 in voice search.

Creating how-tos require research on voice keywords, producing helpful content that is inspired by other top-ranking pages, and doing outreach to subject matter experts. 

Implement the skyscraper method

The skyscraper method is a content production and SEO practice in one. Start with finding well-ranking and relevant voice search keywords that you want to rank for, creating content around those keywords, and looking for authoritative sites that will link to your piece as a reference.

Along the way, you may encounter authoritative sites that are linking to your competitors. What you want to happen is for these sites to replace the competitors’ links with your own. But, you’d have to be able to produce content that is so much better than theirs, so you can effectively steal high-quality backlinks away from them.

Create visual assets

Visual assets like images, diagrams, illustrations, infographics, charts, and other data visualization aides are highly  linkable because every site wants to make their content easy on the eyes of their visitors. But since creating visual content can eat up resources, some sites rely on third-party visual content. You want to be the one producing that highly visual content that other sites can use. Make it available for other users and sites and ask for a link back to your site when they do decide to use it.

Build high-quality links

As you may have already noticed, links are essential in earning a high DA rating and ultimately, a chance at position zero. This makes link building an integral part in improving your site’s authority and relevance. However, links from mediocre sites won’t suffice—you need to earn high-quality inbound links from pages with high DA, too. Here are a few suggestions on how you can do this.

Find customer and partner links

You can leverage the good relationship you have with your partners and customers to earn links. One way is by sending out partnership badges or icons that your users can put on their pages, or by asking customers to write up testimonials about your products and services or their overall experience with working with your company. They can display these with links back to your site.

Guest posting or contributing articles to high-authority industry sites

Another link building tactic is guest posting, wherein links may be placed on your author bio or the content itself. It starts with researching industry sites that you can guest blog on, which can be done with Ahrefs’ Context Explorer Tool. Remember to only reach out to websites that are relevant to your business. You, then, have to come up with the topic for your post. 

After which, you can start reaching out to the sites you have selected and pitch your ideas. You can contact as many blogs as you like (since there’s no guarantee that all of them will respond) or pitch one idea to various sites. If more than one respond, give the topic to the site with the highest authority and provide other ideas to the rest. Once you’ve written the post, wait for it to get published.

Despite being a prominent link building practice, guest blogging doesn’t work as well as it used to now because Google has devalued links from guest posts. However, many marketers still do this, with a few caveats:

  • Choose sites that are picky about what they publish and are relevant to your topics. You don’t want to submit to those that will accept anything.
  • Don’t use exact anchor text in external links.
  • Avoid sites that explicitly state they accept guest posts because they are most likely swamped with pitches.

Broken link building

Earn back the links you lost by fixing broken or dead links. This usually happens when you move pages around or the site that linked back to you made a mistake in the URL. Find broken backlinks by going to Ahrefs > Backlinks > Broken. You can also do this with competing sites (Ahrefs > Best by links report > filter “404 not found”).

Check your competitors’ broken backlinks and make a request to the webmaster to replace it with links to your site. Make sure that you have already created content that can replace the broken links. This can also be applied to links bearing information that are may already be outdated. This works best in an industry that often goes through changes like SEO. 

You can even apply this strategy on Wikipedia pages, which you’d want to leverage considering its high DA and trust level from Google. There are two types of links you can look for: information with citation needed and details that previously link to a source that has since been taken down. You can use the WikiGrabber tool to get a list of articles that have either or both kinds of links, or you can just Google it (site:wikipedia.org “Keyword/phrase” “dead link”). 

If you choose to fix broken links on Wikipedia, make sure not to sign up as an editor or with a company email address. Otherwise, your edits may be considered as spam.

Monitor brand mentions

If your brand is mentioned on other pages without a link back to you, you’ve got an easy link opportunity. Simply email the webmaster and ask them nicely to put a link on your brand name back to your site. You can also do this with competing products. Find sites where your competitors are getting mentioned and contact the authors so you can introduce your brand to them. 

You can monitor brand mentions by setting up alerts for your products or those in your niche, by using Ahrefs’ Content/Site Explorer. Search for your brand name; choose “highlight unlinked domains;” filter with DA, organic traffic, or any other details you want. Then, export the unlinked pages so you can start pursuing the site owners of those mentions without a backlink to you.

Still using Ahrefs, search for spelling errors of your domain name by entering a misspelling into Ahrefs Site Explorer or by using a Domain Typo Generator. Place the list of misspelled domain names into the Ahrefs Batch Analysis Tool and click Domain as the Target mode.

You can also use Google Alerts to monitor brand mentions easily.

Niche-specific directories

You can submit your blog to both general and niche directories. However, if you want to stay relevant, go for niche directories as they only accept sites that cover a specific topic. If you want to do better for voice search, you can also submit to local listings, especially those that focus on your city or state. 

Offer your linkable assets 

A linkable asset is a high-value page on your website that you can utilize for links over and over again because of how informative or useful it is for people. It’s essential in making your link-focused content marketing campaign successful. Linkable assets may also refer to images, infographics, illustrations, and charts.

This means that you need to start looking for or producing linkable assets that you can exploit. According to studies by Backlinko, attractive charts and graphs can give you two or three times more links compared to content that is not considered linkable mainly due to authors embedding them on their own content with a backlink.

Some bloggers struggle to find relevant images for their posts. When you’re particular with your linkable assets (and even hire a graphic designer to do them for you), not only would you have a relevant and well-crafted imagery to go along with your post, but you’re also opening an opportunity to be linked to by sites that may find your assets useful for them, too. 

Whatever It Takes

In traditional SEO, DA is better off used to compare your score against your competition. However, with the surge of voice search, you need to learn and explore different methods that can help your site appear as a Featured Snippet, ultimately making it the first choice of smart assistants for voice search results.

At the end of the day, DA can still be pertinent to your end goal of being part of voice search results because only relevant, trusted, and accurate answers deserve the position zero spot. Provide high-quality content and earn backlinks from authoritative sources. Acquire the right voice search SEO services so you can learn more tips and recommendations on how to optimize your site for better DA.

About Us

At Voice SEO, we make it a point to study industry trends and update our strategies each and every time we notice a change in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

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FAQ’s

How to Optimize Your Voice SEO for the Google Local Three-Pack
If you have a business in a particular community, being part of the Google Local Three-Pack can boost your overall online presence. Also called Map or Snack Pack, the local pack is the section that..

Should You Outsource Voice Search SEO Services or Build an In-house Team?
Without a doubt, the way we interact with technology has shifted over the years. Before, people only use their phone for sending text messages or calling someone. Today, you can now pick up your.. ...phone and ask your voice assistant to call a specific person or send them a message. They can also find you the answer to any question you have.