VoiceSEO

voiceseo-admin

Voice Search SEO for Ecommerce: 23-Point Checklist for Your Online Shop

Online Shopping

Decades ago, the first mobile phone was invented to provide better and more accessible communication. Fast forward today, mobile phones have become predominant in people’s daily lives and are more than just a device for communication. These handy devices now play multiple roles to help users in various tasks like finding a restaurant nearby and shopping online with the aid of voice search technology.

Voice search tends to communicate beyond the basic level. They help users perform simple product queries as they depend on the technology to, for instance, order a pizza or buy a toilet paper.

Statistics show that over 30% of U.S. consumers have used voice-enabled devices to find product information or purchase products. Research also found that 22% of online consumers who purchase grocery products are using smart assistants. By 2022, revenue from voice shopping is expected to reach $40 billion in the U.S. alone.

With this, ecommerce marketers are finding ways to align their strategies for voice search shopping to stay ahead of the curve. If you’re an ecommerce business owner or a marketing manager of an online store, then you’re at the right place. Below is a rundown on how you can improve your ecommerce website’s voice search SEO—from finding the right market to conducting keyword research.

23-Point Voice Search SEO Checklist for Ecommerce Sites

Identify your target audience

Understanding and tapping into your ideal market is marketing 101. You need to know where to find them and how to capture their attention if you want them to buy your products.

1. Develop your buyer persona – This marketing basic has never been so vital in the effort to optimize for voice search. Customer research is an important methodical step to identify your target audience. Knowing your ideal customers and understanding their needs, habits, and behavior will help you develop a more targeted marketing approach.

2. Consider their own consumer journey – After clearly defining your target audience, identify the stages your customers will have to take to reach your desired goal, usually to make a purchase. Understanding what your customers have to go through will enable you to find the right keywords and phrases to use for each step of their journey—awareness, interest, evaluation, purchase, customer support, and advocacy.

Spy on your competitors

The ecommerce industry is a tough stage to dominate, especially when you have big competitors in your respective niche. If you want to be ahead of the game, you need to find out about your competition and see how they strategize. Once you have the data, use it to your advantage.

3. Create a list of your competitors – Evaluating your niche’s players in the field and conducting a competitor analysis will help you identify companies sharing the same target market with you. You can use SEMRush’s Smart Competitive Research tool to find your top competitors, and other additional information such as traffic sources, keywords, and backlinks, that can guide your next move.

4. Check the strategies of your competitors – Using a competitive research tool can also help you see what your competitors are doing right, how they’re doing it, and how you can overcome them. Find out what key phrases they’re focusing on and see if you could add the keywords to your voice search SEO strategy. This analysis can help you develop the necessary improvements for your ecommerce website over time.

Perform keyword research

Now that you have identified your target audience and seen what your close competitors are up to, you can start doing your keyword research. This gives you information about your market’s interests and intent—how and why they search for products your ecommerce site offers. It also gives you an idea about the qualified buyers’ top keyword searches.

5. Find long-tail keywords – In voice search, keyword queries contain more than three words and are targeted at a specific demographic. Identifying long-tail keywords in ecommerce isn’t easy. You can use a keyword research tool like Answer The Public, but it’s good to check ecommerce titan, Amazon, for this rich data. Try entering a general keyword on the search bar, and you’ll find the long-tail keyword suggestions below.

6. Use natural language – People who use voice search perform queries with natural and conversational language—as if they’re talking to a friend. This means they’re likely to ask questions or perform commands in full sentences. You can apply this tactic in your content marketing efforts like in your subheadings and your writing tone.

7. Find relevant keywords – Look for phrases related to the top search keywords in your industry. Then, look for other combinations of terms related to that, which your target consumers use to search for products that your ecommerce business offers.

8. Discover what keywords your competitors rank for – You can find this data during your competitor analysis. The objective is to see what organic and paid search keywords are sending traffic to your competitors. You can then update your strategy to target any keyword gaps or find any keyword opportunities based on the analysis.

9. Identify negatives – Negative keyword research is as important as regular keyword discovery opportunities because it prevents marketers from spending their PPC budget on irrelevant keywords. You can refer to WordStream’s Negative Keyword Tool to review negative keywords to avoid. This encourages you to bid on valuable keywords that will grow your click-through-rate.

Enhance your website speed

Yes, page speed matters even in voice search SEO because regardless of how consumers choose to make searches, search engines still favor websites that load faster.

10. Observe proper formatting – Accurate and proper formatting is not only helpful for making it more user-friendly for both text and voice search but also vital to reduce website load times. When your product page is appropriately formatted, your site will load faster, and search engines will find it easier to understand the context of your page.

11. Optimize for mobile – One way to ensure your site speed is by optimizing it for mobile. When a site loads quick and smooth on mobile gadgets, that means it will load just as nicely (if not better) on other more comprehensive platforms.

Improve your on-site content

Now that you’ve determined the relevant keywords for each page of your ecommerce site, it’s time to optimize your on-page elements for each page of your site. Furthermore, a well-rounded on-page SEO can help boost your website speed.

12. Designate a primary keyword for every page – Assign and target one keyword for each page of your website. Make sure that the keyword isn’t used for your other pages for because this will only confuse search engines as to which page should rank high on the SERPs.

13. Designate two to four LSI keywords for each page – LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords are phrases and terms that are related to a page’s primary keyword. Assigning LSI keywords for your product pages help search engines understand the extra context, based on search patterns, and connect it to the target keyword. LSIKeywords is a nifty tool that can help you find similar or related terms to your primary key phrase.

14. Produce content for product pages – Your product pages have higher chances to rank if a) they contain 300 or more words on the page and b) the content is high quality and helpful to readers. Include a brief summary that details the features, specifications, and benefits of the product to assist your consumers as well as search engines in understanding and ranking that page.

15. Add Schema Markup to every page – Schema markup language is a form of categorized micro-data that is encrypted into your page’s HTML code. The structured data boosts your content’s visibility and helps search engines decipher the page content.

The markup fleshes out your page content’s relevancy signals through context clues (i.e., title tags, headings elements, meta, etc.) for voice search SEO. You can use Google’s free tools:Structured Data Testing Tool to check your markup works correspondingly, and Structured Data Markup Helper to help you write the markup elements in your site.

16. Use unique title tags – Title tags are key elements for ecommerce stores. Since you’re hosting potentially hundreds or thousands of product pages, it’s important to use distinct title tags for every product page and category. Use key phrases and observe an organized structure (e.g., brand + model + item + type).

17. Write concise meta descriptions – Voice search results may not read meta descriptions as a direct answer, but it is displayed in the results. These snippets provide a brief yet concise (up to 230 characters) summary of a page. As much as possible, include your primary and secondary keywords on meta descriptions for your optimization efforts. 

Make your site mobile-friendly

Around 20% of searches on mobile devices are voice-based. This implies that a significant amount of voice search traffic is coming from mobile and tablet devices, and the search volume will only grow from here. This is why it’s vital to make your site more responsive on mobile gadgets.

18. Make it easy to navigate – Do bear in mind user experience when optimizing your site’s mobile version. Make your text easy to read and place the links at a good distance. Least you want is to make it hard for your visitors to click the right link. When visitors find your site far from mobile-ready, chances are they’ll leave immediately. This may increase your bounce rate, which can then negatively impact your page rankings.

Integrate local SEO tactics

Some ecommerce stores operate a physical shop; this is where local SEO strategies come in handy. About 46% of people who use voice search look for local business information daily. Moreover, “near me” and other localized queries are often answered aloud by a voice-enabled device.

19. Add local citations – Local citations are mentions or references of your ecommerce business on citation websites or online directories.The more citations your site gets, the higher the chances you get at topping the search engine results. You can build your local citations through online “yellow pages” such as Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, and Google My Business (GMB).

Make sure that you include the basic information: business name, address, and phone number (NAP) across all directories for consistency as well as easy identification and indexing by search engines.

20. Optimize and verify your Google My Business – A Google My Business listing is arguably the most important listing your business can claim online. Claiming your GMB boosts your chances of appearing in Google’s Local Pack, Google Maps, and organic rankings. This means increasing your store’s chances of being read aloud as the answer to voice search queries.

Perform an ecommerce audit

It’s important to conduct an ecommerce SEO audit once you’ve done everything else in this checklist. This lets you see if you’ve missed any step in your voice search optimization strategy.

21. Check for any duplicate keywords – With ecommerce sites, your goal is to assign a unique keyword for each page on your site. This makes it easier for search engines to understand the context and category of your page content and rank them accordingly on the SERPs. If you optimize two pages for one keyword, search engines will get confused at identifying which one is more important.

22. Scan your site for duplicate content issues – Much like with duplicate keywords, duplicate content on your ecommerce site will contribute nothing good. Search engines will have a hard time ranking your content if it’s been used several times throughout your website.

Additionally, we all know how much Google hates duplicate content—you can get penalized for it. Using the same content more than once may not be intentional, that’s why it’s best to double-check your website to ensure that there are no cases like this.

23. Examine if there are crawl errors – Meta tag SEO refers to the process of inserting meta tags to the code of a webpage to help search engines better understand the context of the page. If they find it relevant and valuable to readers, they will place it high up the search ranks.

If you happen to insert meta tag SEO errors, the affected pages will be difficult for search engines to crawl and index.

You can use Alexa’s SEO Audit Tool to evaluate your website copy for any duplicate content. It also scans your site and provides a crawler status report to help you make improvements for your site’s grade.

Build an Effective Top to Bottom Voice SEO Strategy for Your Online Shop

With more and more people using the voice search function for their online shopping needs, you need to adopt and level up your optimization techniques to cater to this audience. Adding voice search optimization tactics to your pre-existing SEO strategies can place your ecommerce site more frequently at a better position in the search engine results pages.

Go through this checklist and make sure that you implement these steps on your online store’s SEO strategies to boost your brand’s visibility, traffic, conversions, and revenue.

Don’t know where to get started with your online site’s voice search optimization? Check us out at Voice SEO for all your voice search optimization needs!

How to Optimize Around User Intent for Voice Search

User Intent

Search engines exist to provide the best and most relevant answers to users who are looking for information. This specifically means that your search engine optimization (SEO) strategies should be built around the intent behind these queries.

A study by the University of Hong Kong discovered that web search intention can be divided into two means: one, a user may be looking for results to a more specific query (specificity); and two, a user may wish to check out more general information related to the keyword queried (exhaustivity).

Today, a new age of search is on the rise, giving much focus to user intent and voice search optimization. Thanks to new algorithm updates, Google now analyzes the intent behind each query to deliver the most relevant and accurate results that solve problems, not just match with the keywords.

With this, voice search optimization attempts to understand the intent behind the combination of long-tail keyphrases used. Voice SEO does this to deliver the best results and meet the searcher’s expectations in order to gain better search rankings in SERPs.

Google Hummingbird’s Job

As a way to deliver more accurate search results, Google released Google Hummingbird, which features a semantic search and knowledge graph. The algorithm update allows the search engine to have a more advanced understanding of a user’s search intent in order to display more relevant results to corresponding search queries.

This is a long shot from the traditional SEO practice of keyword stuffing. The Google Hummingbird update paved the way for more helpful search matches, finally putting into the register the criticality of user intent. As a result, digital marketers and brands now have the opportunity to produce more useful and valuable content for searchers, helping them rank better on SERPs.

What is User Intent?

Every time users pick up their mobile devices to get immediate answers to their problems or look for information about a brand or product, that action expresses user intent. The crux is that each user who conducts an Internet search has a particular intent. They have specific wants and expect the search results to meet that intent. This is the jump-off point for successful optimization for conversion.

There are four main categories of User Intent searches. This determines the type of results that Google provides to its searchers. The first three can be broken down as Do – Know – Go, and the fourth one being a commercial investigation.

Do (Transactional Queries)

Transactional queries are when users go on the web to perform specific actions such as buying a specific brand or product or availing a particular service. This search intent implies that the user is prepared to make a purchase. Example queries under this intent is “How to start a Netflix subscription?”

However, “Do” queries aren’t always about making a purchase. Some users perform queries that are not explicitly transactional in intent, but search engines still suggest pricing in case the user actually wants to buy (e.g., “Flight prices from New York to Hawaii.”).

Know (Informational Queries)

Informational queries are when users perform a search to find more information and learn about a certain topic or product. Queries like “How to make homemade hot chocolate?” or “What is the thirteenth zodiac?” fall under this category.

“Know” queries are tied to micro-moments. These micro-moments happens when a user acts upon fulfilling a specific query. Since users can pick up their smart devices to quickly look something up, brands and marketing experts are expected to deliver accessible, relevant, and real-time information anytime, anywhere.

Queries in this category of user intent can be simple or complex, but always informational in intent. While some queries may require product research, the action is neither commercial nor transactional.

Go (Navigational Queries)

Navigational queries are when users go on the web to find a specific website or location, usually a known brand or entity. “Go” queries skip going to the navigation bar or bookmark pages.  An example of this is when a searcher says “Log in on Spotify” or “Find Taylor Swift’s “ME!” official video on Youtube.” When users perform these queries, they expect to get directed to a particular location. If the search results deliver a competitor brand result (eg. suggesting Apple Music instead of Spotify), then it fails to satisfy the searcher’s needs. 

Commercial Investigation

Commercial investigation queries are when users have the intention to purchase a product or service in the future, but they go online to do research first. For instance, they would ask “What is the best shampoo for curly hair?” or “What’s the best movie streaming service?”

These users have an intention to buy a product or avail a service, but they’ll need more time for examining their options and conducting product research. These users need a bit of convincing.

How User Intent is Changing Marketing

User intent is reshaping the way people go through the buyer’s journey. Consumers today no longer follow a linear approach to purchasing. With online shopping and the convenience of search engines, customers can now enter the sales funnel at any point of the journey.

This change also allows brands and marketing experts to create their content to match the points in which searchers or buyers enter the funnel. In short, it’s become all about aligning the funnel to correspond with user intent. It’s all about giving people what they want and need. This helps refine your content development and research on relevant queries and topics.

Tips For Doing Voice Search Optimization Around User Intent

Aim for Position Zero

When you ask Siri or Google Assistant a question, they usually provide one answer. This answer usually comes from the featured snippet. About 40% of voice search results are pulled from Featured Snippets—the segment above the fold on page one of SERPs that is coined “Position 0”.

This means that you shouldn’t be just focusing on being on the first page, but also ranking for position 0. This can increase your website traffic which could result in introducing new customers to your brand. Moreover, featured snippets in position 0 generate an 8.6% click-through-rate.  

Project “Position 0” tip: Structure your content with proper formatting by using subheaders and bullet points. Search engines like organized content which they and the readers can easily digest.

Optimize your Google My Business listing

A study shows that roughly 58% of searchers have utilized voice search to look for local business information. Optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) listing and updating it with the latest information can boost your chances of ranking locally for voice search.

Here’s a basic checklist to guide you when completing your GMB profile:

  • Include complete necessary information such as name, address, and phone number (NAP).
  • Indicate the area code along with your phone number.
  • Use a professional business name associated with your website (e.g., [email protected])
  • Ensure that your business location is consistent between your website, GMB, and other local business listings.
  • Select the relevant categories for your business industry.
  • Use high-quality images to make your listing more credible and attractive.
  • Take the opportunity to describe your business, products, and services in the introduction field.

Many people are using voice assistants to ask for business opening hours, contact details, addresses, directions, and other queries that need direct answers. Make it easier for your local audience to find you.

Local and vocal

Speaking of optimizing for local search, Google found that “near me now” searches have increased by 150% over the past years. People trigger queries like “Show me the top Korean restaurants nearby in [specific city]” unless they’re within the vicinity and ready to head out for lunch or dinner.

They want to eat, they want results, and they want them now. Local voice search is all about urgency and delivering value immediately.

Given this, your local optimization strategy for voice search should focus on all the touchpoints. Create a FAQ segment on your website which provides in-depth answers to all common questions. You can also optimize your subheadings to correspond with such search questions, write list articles, or include tables in your site content. This will help you rank higher for local searches and increase your chances of turning queries into leads.

Keep the user’s own journey in mind

Since its introduction, the buyer’s journey has been the staple in mapping and developing campaigns and strategies for marketing and sales professionals. Fast forward to today, the evolution of online search and shopping has transformed the way people go through each stage of this journey. The customer journey is no longer linear.

Before, consumers follow a linear path when searching online: landing page > homepage or form > product page > form. But the inception of mobile and voice search dramatically transformed consumers’ purchasing decisions and their path towards that final stage.

As marketers, you can identify which part of the stage the customer is at the moment based on search results analysis and insights from tools like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Consider developing your SEO and content strategy for voice search through mapping questions as per the various stages of the customer journey:

  • Awareness: “What’s the best smartphone?”
  • Interest: “Can you do voice searches on Apple’s iPhone XS?”
  • Evaluation: “Which is better: Apple or Samsung?”
  • Purchase: “How much does the iPhone XS cost?”
  • Customer Support: “Why does the iPhone XS sometimes glitch after the iOS update?”
  • Loyalty: “What smart wearables work with iPhone XS?”         

Focus on content that solves problems

Most people who use voice search are on-the-go and seeking for immediate answers. If you fail to deliver, it’s likely that you’ll fail to rank on the SERPs for voice search.

Most questions start with H + 5W questions: how, who, what, when, where, and why. Google and other search engines tend to prioritize voice search answers that are concise and within 29 words. This doesn’t mean you should only write 29-word blog posts. Instead, you can use your FAQ page for this purpose.

As a guide, you can research questions in their conversational context through Reddit, Twitter comments, and other discussion threads to have an idea of what and how people craft their queries using voice search. You can also use some tools to optimize and segmentation of niche questions.

Complete the keyword query

“OK Google, find an in-depth article that explains what user intent is and how to optimize it around voice search.”

With voice search, keyword queries are longer and more conversational in nature. People are more likely to ask full questions rather than command one or two keyphrases as they would normally type in a search bar. And frankly, it’s easier and more convenient to speak than type. This implies big changes to how you should write the title of your blog post or your content in general.

So, instead of writing around one or two keywords, try experimenting with long-tail keywords (complete, conversational sentences) in your on-page content. Imagine you’re sitting face-to-face with a customer or your readers, think about how they would construct their question related to your business, industry, products, and services. Chances are it sounds conversational in nature.

Additionally, if you type your keyphrases on Google, you can check out the “People Also Ask” box to get a better understanding of other question ideas. You can see that the suggested queries are complete sentences and sound conversational—just as how someone would ask it using voice search.

Use structured data

Producing relevant content is an excellent voice search optimization tactic. Structured data, also known as schema markup language, can help augment your content for better visibility.

Structured data is a form of organized micro-data that you can insert into your site’s HTML code so that search engines can decipher and further understand your site content. Full disclosure: this doesn’t directly affect your site’s ranking. However, it does help Google contextualize and index your data.

The markup sets up your web content’s relevancy signals for voice search SEO through context cues (i.e., title, tags, meta, headings elements, etc.) that correspond with specific keyword queries. Below are some resources you can start with:

  • Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool – Google’s free tool that allows you to see if your markup works appropriately.
  • Schema.org – An online database of schema vocabularies you can use to make it easier for webmasters to construct their schema. You can also find FAQs, latest updates, and guides on how you can schema it to your site.
  • Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper – Another free tool that helps you markup elements in your website content to improve the search engine to comprehend your page data better.

A famous example of where structured data are seen and maximized is when searching for recipes. When results highlight images, calories, cooking duration, cooking steps, and other information, that’s structured language in action.

Summing up

People don’t just search online for no reason. There’s always a reason for it.

Users search online with a purpose; with an intent to find immediate answers for their queries—specific or general information. To optimize your voice search with user intent in mind, stop thinking like a marketer for one moment. Stand in your target audience’s shoes and think how they would: short, simple, and conversational.

At Voice SEO, we offer voice search optimization services that focus on getting your content in front of your target audience. If you want to drive valuable website traffic, grow conversions, generate revenue, and grow your business, consider voice search optimization tactics. Get in touch with Voice SEO now to optimize your website today!  

UX Best Practices to Boost Your Voice Search SEO

UX Best Practices to Boost Your Voice Search SEO

There’s no better team in driving consumers to your website and generating leads than a seamless user experience (UX) and effective SEO strategies. These two go hand-in-hand when it comes to ranking in search engines, getting your target audiences’ attention (SEO), and providing the best intuitive experience for the visitors (UX). Simply put, they work together to provide the best experience for visitors. 

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s define what UX is in the world of SEO.

In its basic form, UX is everything that occurs when users start to interact with your brand or business through your website and other channels. It’s focused on engaging with the users once they click the search result to visit your site.

The goal of good UX is to provide a user-friendly design that seamlessly guides users through their journey. Good UX is when visitors encounter minimal distraction or friction when navigating and using your site; from exploring your content to checking out your products or services, and ultimately converting.

In the epoch of digital, people almost always rely on Google and other search engines to find answers for their questions. In the old days, keyword stuffing was enough to rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs). This no longer applies today. 

In fact, this practice is considered archaic and even detrimental to your ranking. Aside from other ranking factors, UX  is positioned as a critical element of an effective SEO strategy that can help your site reach the top of the search results. 

Why is user experience important for voice SEO? 

User experience is a critical component in an effective voice search SEO strategy. Roughly one in five adults makes use of mobile voice search at least once a month. The inevitable rise of voice and its integration in web design had designers rethinking their website information architecture and navigation. 

As consumers continue to “talk” to their smart devices, businesses are presented with a challenge—how can businesses work with this new and ever-evolving technology to satisfy users’ expectations? 

You guessed it, improve the website’s UX. While voice search introduces you to your target audience, your website’s UX does the majority of the legwork in keeping them engaged. UX aims to guide the visitors smoothly through the website, and hopefully, they take an action that will generate profit. 

Here lies the difference…

Normal type-to-search provides a long list of results. The difference with voice search is it doesn’t provide the searcher several results or multiple choices. Instead, it pulls a single result or a very short list—the top results. It presents what the search engine thinks is/are the most appropriate and relevant content that answers the searcher’s query. The structure of voice search relies on claiming position zero or the top results of the results page. 

More importantly, Google’s algorithm takes into account “searcher satisfaction” as a ranking signal, which evaluates how a searcher responds to a result they’ve viewed. Upon clicking a result, the algorithm sees whether the searcher completes an action on the website, shares the page on their social media account, or leaves the site after only viewing one page. These are strong indicators of whether the displayed result fulfilled the searcher’s query. 

Your website is your brand’s personality. It shows your visitors how reliable, trustworthy, and credible you are. Because of this, you need your UX design to be as user-friendly as possible to establish that trust, highlight your professionalism, and boost your search visibility. 

More than the appearance, you should take into account the other aspects that help with search rankings, like page speed, mobile-friendliness, engaging and informative content, and many others. Given this, brands and marketers are optimizing whatever they can to rank at the top, organic position. 

When you design or revamp your website, remember this: if you were a visitor, would the page you’re building, and the content within it suffice your needs? 

What are the UX Best Practices that impact voice SEO?

Start optimizing your website for frictionless user experience. Mind you, you’re not doing this for your audience alone, but also for search engines. This helps them determine your website’s authority, relevance, and trust—which are all Google ranking signals—to then help rank and index your page accordingly. 

Here’s a rundown of the website elements that influence both user experience and SEO to help your website get the top spot (preferably position zero) in voice search. Let’s get started! 

Optimize your headings

Headings are put into place to make it easier for your site visitors and search engine crawlers to find and understand information, and navigate your page content. Appropriate headings make your content more readable and easy on the eyes. 

Here are some tips on how you can optimize your headings: 

  • Use heading tags (i.e., h1, h2, h3, etc.) to break down the content for the readers and search engines. It tells them what the paragraphs/sections are about, and helps them find their way on the right section easily, if they ever get lost. 
  • Use h1 tag once on your page. This serves as your content’s primary focus; this is your title tag. The h1 tag is typically found near the top of the page, and it’s the title that appears in search engines. For voice SEO, don’t forget to include your primary long-tail keyphrases in your headings to contextualize what your content is about, and of course, to help with rankings. 
  • The h2 through h6 headers should aid in organizing the rest of your content’s structure. Note that you don’t have to use all heading tags. Sometimes, you only need h1 and h2s for your page content, while there are instances where you’d need more. Just like this article.

Make your website navigation and site structure simple

Google uses a machine-learning algorithm called RankBrain to categorize search results and process search queries. This is its third most important ranking signal. It shows searchers what it deems is the most useful and relevant answer to their key phrase query. If many visitors like a particular page, RankBrain will give it a boost in the SERPs. 

Now, how does this connect with site navigation and structure? RankBrain notifies Google whether a visitor likes navigating through a website—if they go from one page to another, clicks on your links, spends a reasonable amount of time on your pages, and comes back to your site time and again. These are all indicators that your site is user-friendly and generally easy to use. 

Here are some tips on how you can build your website for easy navigation:

  • Ditch the pop-ups – The user utilized voice search for convenience and fast results—no typing or several tapping. Intrusive pop-ups obscure the content underneath, which is the primary and only reason why the user is on your page.
  • Focus on behavior metrics, such as your site’s bounce rate, organic CTR, pages per session, and more. You can use Google Analytics to check this. 
  • For your site’s mobile version, design with the user’s experience, and the narrow space provided in mind. Place touch elements with adequate space in between, use readable font size, and make use of white space. 

Roughly 38% of visitors will stop engaging with a website if they find it displeasing. If visitors leave a page without taking any action and go back to the search results with no intention of returning to your site, then that speaks volumes of how poorly optimized the page is. The page will also drop in ranking and get replaced with a different page. 

Take note of user signals

Organic search ranking brought by voice search is largely influenced by user behavioral data. This is how brands and search engines, especially, understand every searcher’s intent. It also gives insights about how they interact with websites. 

User signals refer to the behavioral patterns of users. Search engines then utilize those findings to position your website in the SERPs. For example, a user performs a voice search then clicks the suggested result, but finds that the website content does not satisfy his/her need or it appears poor in design. They then bounce back to Google. This is a signal tipping-off Google that the result does not fit the user’s search query. 

Google leverages this information to help them assess which search results are more useful, valuable, and relevant to a specific search query. Other than the bounce rate, other user signals are the  Click-Through Rate (CTR), time spent on a website, return to SERP-rate, pages per session, and even social signals like social media shares and likes. Although these are not direct ranking factors, studies reveal that there’s a connection between these signals and top search rankings. You can use Google Analytics for these data. 

Improve your page speed

Website speed has always been one of Google’s most notable ranking factors. It’s also a ranking factor for Bing. Search engine spiders calculate your site’s loading speed based on your page’s HTML structure. Statistics show that 47% of consumers expect a website to load within two seconds or less, and 40% of people will abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds. This means that slow load times affect the user experience of your visitors and feasibly hurt your conversion rates.

Since 20% of voice searches are performed on mobile devices, you’d want to check your site’s mobile responsiveness via how long it takes to load completely. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to analyze your webpage’s content and find out if there are issues that affect its load time, and which ones you can then fix or improve to make your page load faster. 

Here are some ways you can boost your website speed for better performance:

  • Compress your images.
  • Make use of browser caching.
  • Limit multiple page redirects.
  • Do not put your multimedia formats on auto-play.
  • Minimize the use of plug-ins and optimize your site’s theme to reduce server response times.
  • Get rid of unnecessary and redundant elements in your HTML, Javascript, and CSS.

People who use voice search are likely on the go. Enhancing your website and mobile version’s page speed is at high priority when it comes to your voice SEO tactics. 

Offer an exceptional mobile experience

Speaking of the mobile version of your website, take a look at it as a whole. What does it look and feel like? Are the text font and size readable? Are the images scaled to an appropriate size? Is it easy to navigate? After Google’s announcement of mobile-first indexing (indexing your site’s mobile version instead of the desktop version), poor mobile responsiveness would surely hurt your rankings. 

Did you know that about 51% of users will purchase from a mobile-friendly website? Imagine how many  conversion you’ll gain by simply optimizing your website for your voice search users’ mobile experience. Do this for searchers who perform and view voice search results on their smartphones.

  • Remove unnecessary fields on your page.
  • Keep your CTAs front and center, and easy to tap.
  • Ensure that your contact details, the “enter” button in your forms, the search bar, menu, and other elements are easy to see and click.
  • Steer clear of popups.
  • When performing mobile site configuration, adopt an all-around responsive web design approach (Google recommends it). This method allows your content to display flexibly across any mobile device screen size. 

Feel free to utilize Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to see how your website renders on mobile devices. 

Produce quality content

Voice search usually gives users just one answer. However, there are instances where it can give a concise list of results. If you rank for position zero, then Siri, Google Assistant, and other virtual assistants will give your site a shoutout through voice search results. Search engines, especially Google, care about how accurate the results are because users trust them. 

Roughly 60% of consumers will not buy from a brand with poorly written content. The thing is, quality content isn’t just for the audience. Google looks into your page’s content relevance, originality, and quality to determine how it will rank (or whether it will) on the SERPs. High-quality content gets rewarded with higher search rankings. 

Additionally, your visitors are likely to stay longer on-site if your content is highly engaging. This decreases your bounce rate and signals Google that your content is an excellent answer to the search query.

Here are some tips to level up your content:

  • Format your content accordingly (i.e., use heading tags, bullet points, etc.).
  • Write for your audience—human readers—not search engines. This is especially important in voice search where users perform natural language queries since they interact humanely with it. 
  • Write like an expert and support your claims with references. 
  • Run your draft on a plagiarism and grammar checker to spot errors and duplicate content. 

Moreover, Google analyzes content quality via its expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. 

To rank on SERPs, you need to demonstrate that you’re an expert in the field. To display authoritativeness, your content should have backlinks from credible sources. Your website’s trustworthiness is measured through aspects like strong website security, quality reviews, and your online footprints. On-page indicators of these three are shares, bounce rate, and time spent on-page. 

Pro Tip: create content that answers definitive questions, like a FAQ page or blog post, that addresses all your target audience’s burning questions. Then, frame the title or other headings of the content like how users who might use voice command will search for it. For example, you can write the questions in your FAQ page like this: “How to refund/return an item?”

UX influences how visitors will see your brand

User experience is all about prioritizing the searchers’ needs as well as the search engines’. After all, voice search gets your foot in the door, while your website’s UX focus on keeping the visitors engaged and comfortable when browsing your site. 

Many people who uses voice search perform “near me” searches. If you want to rank for geo-specific keywords, you need to understand your audience and how they behave on a webpage, the search engine ranking signals, and how they use your website to communicate. When you get your website’s UX and your voice search SEO down to the letter, the ranking (let’s aim for that featured snippet display) will follow. 

Are you interested in optimizing your business’ website for voice search? We offer voice search SEO services that can help your brand rise from the competition. Work with us today to provide the best experience for your target audience! 

Voice Search SEO Predictions and How to Survive Until 2022

Voice Search SEO Predictions for 2020

It’s nothing short of amazing how far we’ve gone and how fast we’ve achieved everything related to speech recognition technology. Our phones are now capable of doing tasks as commanded without touching any buttons. Even homes are into it, controlling the lighting fixtures and telling our appliances what to do.

But more than being functional, voice recognition technology has turned into one of the most efficient tools for marketing in this digital age. A quick query can give users the answers they are looking for or ask to book a restaurant. It’s safe to say that the future is already here.

We’ve come a long way from the time when Google had its first foray into voice search with its GOOG-411 service after it was launched back in 2007. It was a telephone service that allowed users to talk into their phones to run local searches. All they needed to do was dial a toll-free number, 800-GOOG-411, and mention their city name, state, and business category. Once done, Google would give them search results that contained up to eight businesses users could choose from.

Apparently, this was Google’s clever strategy to build a phoneme database that could help the company build robust text-to-speech software that would eventually be the foundation of today’s voice search technology.

A year after the first iPhone was introduced in 2007, Google started using this database to bring their text-to-speech software to smartphones by creating the first voice search app for the iPhone. This was the first incidence of speech-to-text making it into a commercial device, and also the introduction of voice search as we know it. Since then, Google has been making constant adjustments to its voice search algorithms over the years.

However, it took four years for the next big innovation to take the world by storm. In 2011, iPhone’s Siri opened up a totally new market that would soon grow to massive proportions.

Voice assistants quickly made their way into consumer smartphones and computers. After Siri monopolized the voice assistant market, big players started to make their move. Microsoft unveiled Cortana and Amazon followed suit with Alexa. It may have been a little late to the party, but in 2016, Google finally announced Google Assistant, changing the game of search engine optimization as we know it.

The State of Voice Search Today

Today, there are over one billion devices that provide voice-assisted searches to users. Both Siri and Google Assistant are now dominating the smartphone market, while Amazon’s Alexa is at the top of the smart speaker food chain.

The world is starting to adapt to the way speech recognition technology has evolved, and with good reason. Voice search is 3.7 times faster than typing. Comparatively, people can talk with the speed of 110-150 words per minute. Versus the average typing rate of 38-40 words per minute, voice search is considerably more convenient.

With smartphones and smart speakers now proliferating in the market, more people are using voice search. In January 2018, there were an estimated one billion searches per month. At this rate, 50 percent of searches will be carried out via voice by 2020.

From a marketing standpoint, these numbers tell you that your business should be working on ways on how to use voice search to your advantage. Perhaps it’s time to find the right partner that knows how to deliver top-notch voice SEO services to help your company stand toe-to-toe with your biggest competitors.

At the rate smart devices that feature speech recognition technology are being purchased in the market, the shift to voice search is expected to take over. This leads us to ask the question: where is voice search going?

Where Is Voice Search Going?

It’s easy to predict what will happen to a futuristic technology like voice since we all can get excited and ambitious to what this can do. There are several predictions by how voice search will grow and improve over the years, so let’s dive right into them to keep you up-to-date about the technology:

Voice search will become mainstream

With a forecast involving 50 percent of the world’s searches done through voice by 2020, it’s worth discussing if the technology going mainstream will check out.

Let’s take a realistic look at voice search and go beyond the hype to find out what opportunities lie ahead of it. Taking a closer look at this bold prediction, the stat can be traced back to Andrew Ng, former vice president and chief scientist at Baidu. He stated during a 2014 Fast Company interview, “In five years time, at least 50 percent of all searches are going to be either through images or speech.”

This quote was then popularized by venture capitalist Mary Meeker, who included it in the timeline of voice search in her 2016 report about internet trends, and wrote 2020 as the year this forecast was expected to come true.

As you can see, stats can be a little distorted during the process of retelling since the difference is substantial. It’s not just voice, but also visual search that’s involved, making it a bit trickier to benchmark since there are limited stats on how many searches are done through images.

Since voice search is more widespread and well-supported compared to visual search, let’s assume for argument’s sake that 35 percent of Ng’s predicted 50 percent of searches will be voice. How far along are we in hitting that benchmark?

To find out, let’s take into account voice queries of every kind. Around 60 percent of searches are done on mobile, so using Google’s stat that one of five mobile searches is done via voice, this means 12 percent of all Google searches are mobile voice queries.

It’s estimated that another 26.4 million queries are done via smart speakers, which translates to an additional 0.75 percent. This totals 12.75 percent of searches, or 13 percent of searches are voice queries if rounded up. This means that the amount would need to increase by 22 percent over the next year to reach Ng’s prediction. To achieve the 50 percent stat most often mentioned by voice search enthusiasts, we would need to reach an additional 1.3 billion voice searches per day.

Now that we’ve established this 50 percent forecast isn’t realistic, let’s return to our conservative prediction of 35 percent of searches will be voice by 2020. What would it take to reach this number in about a year?

The answer came with another prediction from Ng back in December 2016 via Twitter: “As speech-recognition accuracy goes from 95% to 99%, we’ll go from barely using it to using all the time.” By saying this, he believes that sheer accuracy of recognition will push voice search into entering the mainstream. Perhaps, this is the key.

Responses will be more personalized and contextualized

With a near perfect accuracy in recognizing human speech, we would have the same expectations as having a normal conversation with another person. Virtual assistants should respond seamlessly in a human way and intuitively carry on the dialogue. But if they don’t understand what we want them to do, we’re thrown off and disappointed.

One of the main reasons why voice interfaces are considered as the future of technology is due to the faster and smoother way of relaying a query or command. However, there are still UX problems with voice that needs to improve.

Generally, understanding you still isn’t enough to elicit the right response since many voice commands rely on a specific phrasing. This means you can’t achieve the result you want if you don’t know exactly what to say. The good news is any shortfall could be reasonably solved in the future as technology advances. Responses will be more personalized and contextualized.

Voice notifications

Recently, Amazon added a notification capability to its Voice Services API. This latest voice notification feature allows Alexa to alert a user that there is new content available, such as shopping updates, upcoming offers, and details about a shopping festival, among other updates. This makes sure that voice search has better engagement time and a more frictionless experience.

Voice shopping will boom

E-commerce businesses are set to benefit from voice search. Walmart recently introduced voice ordering for its online grocery service through Google Assistant. The retail giant can now let shoppers add products to their virtual cart by talking to their Google Assistant supported devices. Amazon has led the way with Alexa helping with shoppers purchase off the website through voice.

It appears that voice shopping is set to hit the mainstream, with an estimated US$40 billion growth by 2022. This feature can give product details and recommendations to make shopping a whole lot easier through the help of your AI-powered virtual assistants.

Content over ads

If Google searches are increasingly performed through voice, what would eventually happen is businesses could lose revenue from ads in other channels since paid advertising isn’t allowed through voice—yet. This poses a challenge to brand marketers who are rushing head-first into exploring how to get their brands out there.

However, some enterprising companies are already finding ways to create content that’s voice search friendly in the absence of paid advertising. When HBO needed to promote its children’s show, Sesame Workshop, the company created a game “Esme and Roy,” which allows kids to play using a smart speaker to answer educational questions.

The over 150-year old company Nestle launched its GoodNes Alexa skill that turns any Alexa-assisted device into a highly knowledgeable sous chef. You can ask GoodNes for recipes and nutritional information about a specific dish and it will email the recipe to you, including the utensils needed for preparing the meal. GoodNes also comes with a visual guide that you can view using a laptop or tablet, so you can just say things like, “Show me the ingredients” after finding a recipe and you’ll be able to view them in the browser.

Pretty soon companies without a voice search presence will find other ways to incorporate their brand into their content to benefit from voice search.

Voice search will go beyond smartphones

Amazon Alexa VP Steve Rabuchin has the following to say regarding the future of the technology, “Our vision is that customers will be able to access Alexa whenever and wherever they want.” This confirms plans for the company to give customers the ability to talk to cars, entertainment systems, microwave ovens, and all kinds of devices.

Developers should now be on top of things as systems compete for attention and new players enter the game. They should be able to manage the complexity of developing apps across different channels and platforms.

Brands should also need to understand the capabilities of each device and the integration of their brand. They will also have to focus on maintaining a good user experience consistent throughout the coming years as complexity becomes a concern.

One industry that’s sure to make voice-enabled devices really take off is in the automotive sector and in-car speech recognition. This has already become an added feature in many car brands, and it’s expected to advance in the coming years, allowing users to do more as they drive to work. This gives them a safer driving experience, particularly those who can’t seem to take their eyes off their phones.

Local and hyperlocal search will be the next big thing

Based on trends, voice search users are increasingly searching for local results. A good 58 percent of consumers have found local businesses through voice search. Not only is the number of users growing, but the volume also continues to grow. In fact, 46 percent of those users are expected to use voice search to find local businesses on a daily basis.

According to Google, searches for “near me” businesses have increased dramatically over the past years. This surge in hyperlocal search is fantastic news for local business owners, and one of the factors contributing to this increase is the use of mobile search. This has forced business owners and digital marketers to fine-tune their efforts and capitalize on the rise of hyperlocal searches.

Search algorithms will continue to evolve

Google has been regularly rolling out updates in its algorithm for traditional search. With voice search now gaining momentum, the search engine behemoth will roll out more of these in the future to make the necessary improvements and streamline the process.

Expect voice search to open more doors for your brand as voice search grows. As technology improves, more opportunities will arise. As long as you’re up to date with the search algorithms, you’ll be able to find ways to put your brand out there using new SEO techniques and provide a better experience through more relevant answers to users.

Conclusion

What voice search can do now is only the beginning. Expect to see major advancements in the user interface in the years to come. Businesses need to start educating themselves on how they can best leverage voice search to better engage their customers. For this reason, you should start looking for the best partner that can understand the ins and outs of voice search SEO and the needs of your company, so you take advantage of the benefits of the technology now and in the years to come.

Structured Data for Voice Search SEO: How to Use Schema Markup

Schema markup for voice search

If you’re a frequent internet user with a flair for using more advanced devices, you’ve likely conducted your own share of voice searches to scour the internet for answers. With the world of convenience this brings, it’s no surprise that 72 percent of people have used this method of search through a personal digital assistant.

Thanks to intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) that seem to become more common these days, voice searches are becoming a more popular feature in smart devices. It has changed the way we do an internet search, particularly when driving or doing some other tasks. Soon, more users will be more into voice search as new devices become more accessible.

As a marketer, it’s your job to cover all bases and not limit yourself with traditional search to reach a wider audience. Tapping into this channel would necessarily mean one thing: to claim the top spot, you should aim for the coveted position zero or featured snippet.

A featured snippet is an answer that appears in search results pulled from a relevant website. It’s what digital or virtual assistants relay to a user after performing a voice search or query. There are effective methods to optimize your site and achieve this goal. But before you find effective voice search SEO services to help you in this quest, it’s essential to first understand the vital roles of structured data and schema markup in making this possible.

What is structured data?

Structured data is code in a specific format that’s written in a way that search engines understand. This code is added to a website so search engines can read and use it to show search results in a certain and much richer way.

You’ll need a specific “vocabulary” to make search engines understand the code and make it work. The one used by the major search engines is Schema.org. It provides a series of tags and properties to mark up your website content such as job postings, local business listings, products, and reviews, among other things in detail. This vocabulary was collectively developed by the major search engines—Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex—to reach a shared language, allowing them to gain a better understanding of websites.

Once you’ve correctly implemented this vocabulary, search engines can use the structured data applied to more effectively understand the contents of your web pages. This results in a website that’s better presented in search results in the form of rich results such as rich snippets or rich carousels as an example.

Implementing structured data results in rich snippets which are known to increase click-through rate, drive traffic, and bring you competitive advantages. Having this data can also help your pages appear in featured snippets and, consequently, in voice search results.

To have more extensive knowledge of why structured data is vital in helping boost your voice search results, let’s dive deeper into its role.

Structured data leads to rich results

Rich results are formerly known as rich snippets

Formerly known as rich snippets, rich cards, or enriched results, Google has put an end to the terminology confusion and assigned “rich results” as the correct term. These more coveted search results require the implementation of structured data on your site, which makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and understand what your page is all about, allowing them to return more relevant and detailed results.

While structured data doesn’t guarantee high rankings, it can indirectly affect your site in achieving better search results. Due to your enhanced appearance in SERPs, you’ll have an increase in click-through rates and a decreased bounce rate due to relevancy.

Not to be confused with rich snippets, the rich carousel delivers an enhanced presentation of certain types of subjects on Google. The results are in carousel form that users can swipe through and are most useful for mobile users.

The rich carousel is practically an extension of the rich results. When viewing this on a mobile device, these rich results are presented in cards that are part of a carousel showing the most relevant answers to your search.

Certain types of answers can get special treatment in the carousel such as restaurants, recipes, movies, and ecommerce products, among other things. This type of search results is incredibly useful for users who are looking for places to eat, flights or hotels to book, and products to purchase. Some now offer the possibility to book directly from the search result.

The primary driver of this kind of innovation is the astronomical rise of mobile searches, so search engines are working on tapping into the countless possibilities this can bring.

Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph is that big block of information that appears on the right-hand side of the search results screen. Also known as Knowledge Graph Card, this block contains relevant and context-specific information about your search that’s powered by the Knowledge Graph.

For instance, if you search for a specific company, the Knowledge Graph will show a near-complete profile depending on how that company did its SEO work. When you search for a recently released film, the results will show posters, the cast, and reviews. The Knowledge Graph is a fascinating and powerful tool once you know how to get your information there.

With Google’s core business focused on providing users with the correct answers to all their questions, the search engine doesn’t just present the result that matches closest to the search term, but it also makes broader connections between data. This leads to rich results, carousels, or Knowledge Graphs.

You might mix up the Knowledge Graph and the block of information you see on the right-hand side of your screen. They are not one and the same. To clear the confusion, the Knowledge Graph is the engine that powers that block that we call the Knowledge Graph Card. This card contains the most visible result of what the Graph does. When there’s enough information about the subject, the card will be filled will relevant facts, images, and related searches, among other useful data.

A featured snippet is a search result presented in a box that’s featured on top of Google’s organic search results and below the ads. Its objective is to answer the user’s query right away. Getting featured here adds more brand exposure in traditional and, most especially, voice search results.

Featured snippets come in three types that frequently come up as answers to queries:

  1. Paragraph
  2. List
  3. Table

According to research done by Ahrefs, 99.58 percent of featured snippets already rank in the top 10 of Google’s SERP. So, if you’re already ranking high for associated search queries, you have a good chance of getting featured.

On the other hand, a Getstat study found that 70 percent of snippets came from beyond the first organic position. Therefore, it’s required to have your page be in the top 10 but not required to be number one to be featured.

Another study has shown that the following subjects get featured results more frequently as featured snippets:

  • DIY processes
  • Health
  • Finance
  • Math
  • Requirements
  • Status
  • Transitions

How does Schema.org work?

You now know that schema is a type of structured data markup you can include in your webpages. Now it’s time to go deeper. Schema markup is a vocabulary of tags or microdata that you can add to your HTML. Doing so delivers a fuller explanation to search engines of what your website is all about while improving the way your page displays in SERPS by enhancing the information or rich snippets displayed below the page title.

Schema.org is a collaborative community activity that designed schema to be a universal language for search engines. It offers a collection of shared vocabularies that can be understood by the major search engines. The vocabulary is constantly evolving and is developed by an open community process.

Schema can be used to mark up all kinds of items on a website from people and products, to events and recipes. Every item has an agreed set of sub-properties that’s aimed to be recognized by all major search engines to provide a better explanation of a specific item.

The Schema.org vocabulary can be used with a variety of encodings, including JSON-LD, RDFa, and Microdata. However, Google recommends using JSON-LD, a JavaScript notation, for structured data whenever possible.

When it comes to voice search, schema is particularly valuable due to the structuring of your data that bolsters the direct answers required for voice search results. It also increases the chances of your website appearing as a rich result, which is generally used as the source in answering voice queries.

What kind of items can you mark up?

Schema.org is defined as having two hierarchies with one for textual property values and the other for the things they describe. The main Schema.org hierarchy is composed of a collection of types, or “classes,” with each having one or more parent types.

The list is quite extensive, so the best way to deal with it is to know which sections to prioritize. You can think about what your site, business, or product is about and write down the specifications and properties you feel are essential. From there, you can work your way up the chain.

You can sift through the list by skipping on irrelevant data. Before you start implementing structured data, determine what you should mark up first. Regardless if you have a product line in your online store or you’re a restaurant owner, you need to know what you want to do and explore the possibilities. Remember to check the documentation by search engines to understand what they need from you.

Avoid going for the obscure ones and pick those that are relatively easy to implement. Work your markups in major groups such as CreativeWork and Organization. From there, you can find the most common items to mark up and cover all bases.

To give you an idea of how it’s done, let’s go through the first major group: CreativeWork. This covers the most extensive group of creative works, which are those that have been produced by someone or something. Here’s a shortlist of the most common under this category:

  • Articles
  • Books
  • Courses
  • Datasets
  • How-tos
  • Music
  • Music
  • Q & A’s
  • Recipes
  • Speakables
  • TV & Movies
  • Videos
  • Podcasts

When we look at the hierarchy, the implementation starts with a Thing, which is the most generic type of item. To move onto a more specific item, we select the next thing that applies to your website. Let’s take the business path, for instance. It should go something like this:

  • Thing
    • Organization (or Place)
      • LocalBusiness
        • AutomotiveBusiness
          • AutoBodyShop
            • Name
            • Address
            • Email
            • Opening hours
            • Logo
            • Telephone no.

As you can see, if you’re a local business, you could pick a more specific type, making it easier for search engines to know what kind you own.

How to implement structured data

Now we move on to the more technical stuff in using structured data. It may seem daunting, but don’t fret. The goal is to make the process a whole lot easier for users and search engines to work together for a better understanding of what they need to do to hit their objectives.

JSON-LD

JSON-LD is the preferred method by Google when adding structured data to your site. Thanks to JSON-LD, you don’t have to worry too much about the implementation of structured data. Since it forms a block of code and is no longer embedded in the HTML, this JavaScript-based data format makes it easier to add structured data to your page. Writing and maintaining is also easier, plus it’s better understood by humans and machines.

RFDa and Microdata

The old way of writing structured data involves directly embedding the code into your HTML. This made the process inefficient and prone to error, which is the reason why this method wasn’t quickly adopted by Schema.org. Moreover, writing and maintaining your structured data through RFDa or Microdata can give you a headache.

With the need for itemprops to function, everything has to be inline encoded, making Microdata hard to read, write, and edit.

You can always use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to help you mark up your website to rank, look, and do better in SERPs. It’s a useful and easy-to-use tool where you simply go through a step by step process to have it automatically churn out the code you need to add to your website’s HTML.

Once you’re done, the Structured Data Testing Tool can be used to find out what your page will look like after the added markup. So instead of analyzing your published webpage, you can analyze the code that the tool generated for you. And once you hit “preview,” the testing tool will show you what the article will look like in Google search results.

Conclusion

Gunning for a rich snippet spot may seem quite comprehensive, but it won’t be much of a coveted spot for voice SEO if it’s easy to achieve. But with a complete understanding of what it takes, you’ll be able to know the importance of structured data on your website.

Surprisingly, only a few businesses and websites are aware of this, so you have the advantage of being a step ahead with this knowledge. If you want your website to have a competitive edge on voice search, now’s the time to implement structured data to rank better and hit that featured snippet spot.

With the way structured data helps search engines understand your website, and with the continuous increase of mobile usage, it looks like it’s here to stay. If implemented correctly, it can do wonders for your website and your business in terms of voice search. And even if search engines develop new ways to present search results, the way structured data affects voice SEO can still make us look effectively towards the future.

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.

Links

Contact Us

5800 S. Eastern Ave.
Suite 500,
Commerce,
California, 90040

Phone:
+1 503-388-9172

Email:
[email protected]

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.