best practices

Apr 03 2020

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.

Mar 31 2020

10 Best Practices in Voice Search SEO for Local Businesses

We now live in a world driven by technology. Today’s consumers can easily find their way around by asking questions or giving commands to their smartphones. Through the power of technology, voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant now make it possible to just use voice commands or voice search to navigate your way around your mobile device’s features.

Say, for instance, you want to find the nearest restaurant within a certain area. All you need to do is speak with your smartphone and ask where the nearest restaurant is located (such as Japanese food), and voila! A list of potential restos will pop up on your little screen. Yes, a simple voice search is all it takes to find the best Japanese Ramen place in town.

Beyond being a frivolous party trick, voice search technology can be a godsend for those driving or with poor eyesight. It means no more tedious typing on your keypad. You simply say what you’re looking for and it will respond just as quickly.

From a business owner’s standpoint, this is the perfect way to stand out from the crowd and beat the competition. While everyone is still caught up in the traditional SEO game, your business will be perceived as one that cares for its customers when you optimize for voice search.

It’s a different ballgame

Of course, optimizing your website for voice search tends to differ from the usual SEO standards. Remember that it isn’t a simple keystroke that we’re looking at here. You’re now utilizing the power of voice—just as if one is speaking to another person. So it’s best to keep in mind that:

People use keywords differently. In traditional search queries, one simply types the keywords, for example, “Beauty Salon.” With voice search, one will make their local queries by speaking with their smartphone and asking a question, “Where is the nearest beauty salon?”
Unlike traditional search, there are different major voice assistants involved here. In traditional SEO, the only popular options are Google or Bing. When it comes to voice search, you’ve got Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant to do the job for you.
People using voice search for local queries have strong intent, which you can leverage to nurture and convert them into customers. There is something about voice search that makes one feel in control, thus empowering one to make a purchase of a product or service.

There’s a goldmine waiting to be explored

If you think that voice search SEO is an added expense, consider that:

Using voice search can help direct more people to your physical store. A study revealed that 72% of buyers who find local businesses through voice search end up visiting the stores within a 5-mile radius. As with the example above, a hungry motorist in search of a Japanese restaurant isn’t simply trying out the tech for kicks. He is actually looking to satisfy his hunger—at a place where he can grab a hearty meal of Tempura and Sushi.
Apart from driving people to your store, your business may soon see an increase in website traffic, which means more brand awareness. In fact, 27% of consumers visit the website of a local business after performing a voice query. By providing solutions or answers to voice queries, it’s likely that users will visit your website to learn more about their concern. You can take this visit as an opportunity to capture their contact details using CTAs and lead magnets.

How to Optimize for Voice Search

As mentioned above, voice search optimization is different from traditional SEO methods. Thus, it is important to know how to get the most out of this. There are voice search optimization strategies that you need to consider for your local business in order to reap its rewards.

1. Know where to cite your business

Voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are also called smart assistants because they are effective in delivering in-depth information to users. What makes it possible for them to do this is through data aggregation or the system of gathering and summarizing information from across online databases.

Data aggregators like search engines, maps, online directories or reviews—anything that holds datasets—scour the web for citations that refer to your business name, address, and phone number (NAP). They organize all these pieces of information in their database, ready to be pulled up by voice assistants whenever someone searches about a local business.

You should also ensure that your business has accurate and up-to-date citations or listings on the following data aggregators that each voice assistant uses:

Siri — Google search, Apple maps, and Yelp
Alexa — Bing, Yelp, and Yext
Google Assistant — Google search and Google My Business
Cortana — Bing and Yelp

2. Improve your schema markup

Schema markup is any data-rich information that’s added to a website code to help search engines better understand a website’s content and evaluate if the context suits the query of users.

Unlike ad-hoc algorithms, schema markup is data in a more structured form. This structured data makes it easier for Google or Bing to interpret a series of numbers (for example, a phone number) and show it to users who are looking for a way to contact your business.

Aside from NAP, you can also markup the following data on your website to make your business discoverable on voice search.

Main email address
Operating hours
Online reviews
Business description

3. Use natural language keywords

Google prides its smart assistant in becoming more adept at natural conversations to adapt to people who use natural language in 70% of voice searches.

Search engines look for natural sounding language through long-tail keywords that allow users to phrase their search as if they’re talking to another person.

To meet this criteria, you should definitely consider having as many as five or more words in your target search terms, instead of the one-word phrases that no longer make it to the cut of current SEO standards.

Another way of optimizing your keyword strategy is through question phrases. Take your main keyword and convert it into a question form using the 5W (who, what, where and when) and 1H (how) questions.

4. Tailor your content to voice search needs

Tailoring your content to voice search needs is key. Users of voice technologies don’t use the same search terms and may have very specific criteria in their search, unlike their counterparts who type on a keyboard to enter a search query on Google. With this in mind, you need to keep track of what people are using voice search for.

Remember too that different people have different needs and wants. This means you will need to program a wide range of content to suit different needs. But if you’re catering to a specific target audience, things would be much simpler. Whatever the case, always remember to keep in constant touch with your customers to know what they are looking for. This way, you will be able to take all sides into account and satisfy most, if not all of their wishes.

5. Create a comprehensive FAQ page

Mastering voice search SEO can be quite challenging since Google recommends answering voice queries in under 30 words. This is where you could use an FAQ page.

With an FAQ page, you can take the contents of your blog post, pick only the most important information, and use it to answer a highly specific query about your business. This is also a great way to rank for hundreds of voice search queries, as you use various categories in creating your FAQ pages—all of which let you target relevant keywords.

When you write your FAQ page, be sure to breakdown information into digestible pieces and keep the answers short and simple as much as possible. You can also group related questions and answers together using specific stages in the customer journey and themes.

6. Optimize for featured snippets

Featured snippets, also known as answer boxes, are a type of search result that appears right on top of SERPs, which means users don’t need to scroll down and go to a separate page or link to find an answer to their query.

When you optimize your content for snippets, it has a far better chance of ranking above all others. This is called position zero in search marketing. Since voice assistants are designed to read only one result at a time, they will tend to automatically read back to the user is the top content or the featured snippet.

So if you come across search phrases that don’t return featured snippets on the SERP, use it as an opportunity to create better content that will land you on position zero in the voice search results.

7. Optimize for “Near Me” Searches

Local voice searches are synonymous to “Near Me” searches,” which means that someone is likely to use this phrase when they’re mobile and unable to type in a written query on Google or Bing. Meanwhile, they are able to speak to their voice assistant to help them find the nearest business to their current location.

Local businesses in retail, food and beverage, hospitality, and other service-oriented industries can greatly benefit from near me types of queries by making sure that they optimize their site for location- or directional-based keywords.

8. ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5)

Search engines want its users to have a positive user experience by giving them content that’s easy to understand.

When writing content for voice search, aim for (maximum) a 9th grade reading or comprehension level. Get rid of technical jargon and use words that are familiar for average content consumers when defining or explaining a concept, giving instructions, and the like.

Avoid complex sentence structures too. Instead, aim for simpler ones to make it easy and fast for users to process the information they’re receiving via voice search.

9. Increase your website speed

Another factor that Google uses to rank websites is page speed for both desktop and mobile devices. Based on statistics, 20% of searches on mobile devices are voice-based, but with the rate voice search is expanding, you can expect this number to increase sooner rather than later.

This makes it important that you optimize your website’s loading speed so that you can capture the growing market of voice search users. You should perform regular audits on your site to help you spot technical issues as well as get access to high-speed network from a good web host.

10. Improve your domain authority

Domain authority is an approximate evaluation of your website domain’s potential to rank on search engines. It’s a predictive score given to your site describing how well you’re likely to perform on SERPs based on trustworthiness and authority.

It’s worth noting that with voice search, you don’t necessarily need to acquire a lot of backlinks to have Google rank your site, which is how it works for traditional SEO. Domain authority also considers link quality, which assess the strength of the linking domain as well as the contextual relevance of the link. As long as you follow the best practices in voice search, you can have a good DA and ultimately rank on voice search.

Give Your Brand a Voice

These days, it can be a real challenge to establish your brand image and ranking in the very vast digital space. Not only are you surrounded by competition but there’s also the fact that you need to keep an eye out for what’s hot and new.

So, if you want to stay ahead in the game, it’s best to take advantage of voice search optimization. Voice SEO uses the most innovative tools to provide your local business with quality voice search optimization services. We have SEO experts who understand the core fundamentals of voice search and are well-equipped with the right knowledge to optimize your website and make sure that you attract the right audience.

It’s the wave of the future today, and Voice SEO can help you get to where you want to be.