featured snippets

Apr 09 2020

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

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.

Rich results on mobile: the carousel

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.

Featured snippets

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:

Paragraph
List
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.

Apr 07 2020

Voice Search SEO and Featured Snippets: How to Own Position Zero

Imagine being a newbie marketer, having to prepare for a presentation. You’re on the hunt for software that can help you create the best presentation, so you decided to whip out your smartphone and asked your voice assistant to do a web search for “free presentation tools.”

As you might expect, the voice assistant quoted the content of a website and listed down the names of the apps you can download, based on the search results. The section of the webpage read aloud by the assistant is in the “position zero” of the SERPs and is also called a featured snippet.

What is a featured snippet?

From the name itself, a featured snippet is an easy-to-read, short but authoritative answer to a search query, appearing in a box on top of the SERP, above the organic results and below the paid ones. Due to its location, a featured snippet is also often called position zero (since it’s above the first result) and contains the URL of the page and title.

According to RankRanger, featured snippets appear in 17.71% of searches and may appear as a brief paragraph, list, or table, with the paragraph type being the most popular. It makes getting answers easier, faster, and more convenient, as you won’t have to click on a link to find what you need.

Google generates featured snippets organically, meaning they check the relevancy of the information from organic results when deciding what to put on position zero. According to Ahrefs, 99.58% of featured snippet pages for particular queries are already in the top 10 of the SERPs.

However, it’s not surprising to see sites on page 2 of the SERPs to get position zero, as Getstat claims that 70% of snippets came from websites that aren’t top-ranking organically. Some SEO specialists believe that there’s no exact formula for earning a featured snippet. In addition, a spot in position zero isn’t forever—Google can easily find another page that is better suited for a particular query.

What are the advantages of being a featured snippet for businesses?

Based on the scenario mentioned above, featured snippets are especially crucial in voice search, mainly because smart assistants (including on mobile) will reply the answer to a user’s query with what’s on position zero. By 2020, it is expected that 50% of searches would be done with voice. As voice search becomes the norm, businesses are also projected to go beyond traditional SEO and a page one result.

Voice search SEO may be essential to your business if you’re in a competitive market, where gaining the first position can have a large effect on your market share. Position zero is perhaps easier to attain because it only looks at the relevancy of your content and not so much on link metrics—this is evident on the fact that lower-ranking pages can make it to position zero.

This gives every company a chance to boost its visibility and organic traffic; even though featured snippets readily provide an answer to a query, there is still a chance for the user to click on the box and be redirected to the page with the featured snippet.

In fact, Hubspot has found that content in featured snippets is more likely to be clicked than the first organic result, getting two times higher click-through rate. Because it gives a website above-the-fold exposure, it is more effective in driving traffic to your site and improving your business’ credibility and conversions.

How can you make your content position zero worthy?

Boost your voice search SEO by attaining the coveted position zero. Here are a few guidelines on how you can do it.

Find opportunities to rank

You have to go out of your way to find opportunities that can take you to position zero, and that means doing ample keyword research. You can start with keywords that you’re already ranking well for since most featured snippets come from high-ranking pages.

You can look to your audience behavior customer-facing teams (sales) to know the kind of questions they are likely trying to find answers for when doing keyword research. There are also a few ways to find these:

“People also ask” boxes — These also appear before the first organic result on a SERP. Users may be asking these additional questions related to the current search term. You can also identify competitors and content ideas here.
AnswerThePublic.com — This data-mining tool uses the Google Suggest API to get a list of questions that are often asked about a particular topic, including variations. You can export the list of keywords from ATP and upload it to Stat to automate the process of finding the terms that returned featured snippets.
Moz Keyword Explorer — You can also get a list of questions from Moz by going to the Keyword Suggestions tab, looking for the pull-down list Display keyword suggestions that and choosing are questions.
Rank Ranger’s Keyword Finder — Click Questions under Quick Filters.

In a study by Stat Search Analytics on 92,000 search queries, they found that terms that often return featured snippets include financial, mathematical, time, transitional, status, requirements, health, and DIY processes. Meanwhile, search terms that rarely do include local, info/help, factual, shopping, and images and videos.

Ahrefs also found that search queries with the words “recipe”, “best”, “vs.”, “make”, and “definition” have a better chance of being in position zero. Aside from taking advantage of the terms mentioned, here are more suggestions of what to consider for your keyword research:

High-volume search terms get snippets more frequently.
Explicit questions like who, what, how, where, and why would obviously have featured snippets, but also consider implied questions containing words like “does”, “cause”, and “costs”; and action words like “doing”, “getting”, “making”, or “cooking”.
Snippets for general questions usually show the paragraph type.

Check your competitor’s snippets

Aside from looking into your own analytics and reviewing your users’ behavior, you can also review your competitors’ featured snippets to give you a starting list of keywords you may focus on. The following tools can help you do just that:

SEMrush — Find your own and your competitors’ featured snippets with SEMrush by running a regular domain check and going to Organic Research > Positions, then filter the list of keywords under Advanced Filters by doing the following: Include > SERP Features > Featured Snippets. You can also just click Featured Snippet under the SERP Features list on the right side of the page.
Stat Search Analytics — Create a keyword list and upload it into your Stat to get the rankings for all keywords. It will also show which are producing featured snippets, or “answer” type results. You can filter those keywords to focus on those ranking in the top 10 results and tag keywords you want to track.
SearchMetrics Suite — To find search terms in this tool that are in position zero, use the filter Direct Answers.

With the information in tow, you can start optimizing your content for the same keywords and topics. Keep an eye out for variations of the keywords as well.

Develop high-quality content

Producing informative and relevant content can be made easier if you’ve already done keyword research or have felt the pulse of what people are asking. Of course, it’s also essential to give the correct answer. Here a few SEO tips on how to write good content.

If you’re aiming to be a featured snippet, you must have “snippable” content. Include the exact content that you want to be featured, directly answering the chosen keyword phrase and formatting it into either a paragraph, list, or table.
According to Ahrefs, once a page earns a position zero spot, it’s more likely to be featured in other related searches as well. In this case, you can come up with an in-depth article that answers multiple, related search queries to get a chance to earn several featured snippets for that content. Explore various facets of the topic and explain thoroughly.
Follow the “inverted pyramid” structure: Present the query clearly and prominently on your page, provide a short and direct answer immediately after the question, and then include more information to explain the solution.
Pick an evergreen topic that has staying power. This would ensure that your content would still be relevant for its readers after many days, weeks, months, or even years.
Since Google has utilized latent semantic indexing, it is now able to understand how words relate to each other. Instead of stuffing the same keywords on your content, use related phrases or synonyms.

Meet the optimal word count

In SEO, the longer the piece of content, the better. Some specialists target at least 2,000 words, but when it comes to sections you want to be considered for the featured snippet, you need to keep it concise for Google. According to an analysis by SEMrush, featured snippets is somewhere between 40 to 50 words.

To make sure that you’re breaking up your lengthy content, use headers and section off lists, paragraphs, and tables. This way, you’re preparing your article for a possible featured snippet. In addition, organize your subheadings by size, like using main heading H3 with subheading H4. Also, format it in chronological order, as Google prefers it that way.

Optimize your page properly

Aside from the headers mentioned above (H1–H5 tags), there are also other ways to make sure that your page is adequately optimized:

Make the search query a heading or formatting the question as H1, H2, and so forth.
Place the answer in a short paragraph and format it as HTML tag <p>.
Have internal links to other helpful content.
Make sure that page titles and meta descriptions include keywords.
Include helpful alt tags on images.

Apart from the HTML aspect of optimization, you can also take advantage of the “how-to” content, or pages in websites dedicated to explicitly giving answers users may ask about your business like a FAQs or Q&A page. With the right formatting, you can help Google select a short response from your how-to page as a featured snippet for a question.

Work on your off-site SEO

Off-site or off-page SEO refers to optimization tactics done outside of your page. This is to increase your site’s popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority in the eyes of the search engine, and usually involves other equally reputable sites linking to you as a way to promote and vouch for the quality of your company and your page, which refers to the practice of link building.

Moz’ study on search engine ranking factors shows that off-site SEO may carry more than 50% of the ranking factor weight. It’s safe to say that link building is synonymous to off-site optimization, but there are other techniques that you can use to improve your rankings that are not entirely link related, such as social media and influencer marketing.

Common link building methods include guest blogging or publishing a piece of original content on authoritative websites to gain links, broken link building or fixing dead links by providing webmasters better content, and skyscraper or updating content that already has several links. From blogging alone, you can acquire 434% more indexed pages, with inbound links growing up to 97%.

One thing to keep in mind about link building is that it’s a gradual process and that the quality and authority of the pages where you built links heavily influence your ranking in the SERPs. In addition, you have to maintain a good relationship with other sites (as well as keep on producing good content), so they agree to link your page or have you guest blog for them.

Use high-quality videos and images

Visuals in the form of photos and videos are easy ways to get your readers’ attention and help you rank to position zero. There are available tools like Canva that you can use to create your own images, or you can just pick a free stock photo (if you don’t want to pay for it). You can add free shapes, icons, and more to your images depending on your need.

Videos, meanwhile, are huge for engagement, with 65% of people watching at least three-quarters of a video. Some 59% of executives also believe that people may watch a video if it is combined with text. When creating and uploading a video, make sure that it is high quality.

In addition, do not forget to include a voice transcript of your videos, as Google can recognize the text and even choose it as a featured snippet (provided it fulfills the content requirements). Include the transcript in the description box.

In voice search SEO, zero is everything

Like updates to the Google algorithm, voice search is changing the SEO landscape. Instead of page one, sites should be trying to reach the featured snippet box to enjoy better visibility, more traffic, and eventually, higher profits.

Truthfully, traditional SEO isn’t so different from voice search SEO—all you need is good content. When you have that, you can adapt to almost any algorithm change with ease. Design your content to answer a specific question and continue applying most of your traditional SEO strategies to get better chances of holding a featured snippet.

If you want to start building credibility for voice search today, get in touch with Voice SEO and avail of their voice search optimization services.

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.