schema markup

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 06 2020

How to Optimize for Siri Voice Search Queries

The voice search industry has come a long way since the inception of IBM’s Shoebox, the first digital speech recognition technology. Today, we have Apple’s Siri, the first virtual assistant to be fixed on iPhones and the first voice assistant to reach a broad audience.

Since then, it has transformed how people use their smartphones and utilize the voice search technology. Essentially, Siri kick-started the modern era of voice assistants and the rise of voice search technology.

People use Siri for various reasons, such as to find the nearest Korean restaurant in the neighborhood, to double check if the user has any meetings on a particular day, and to remind the user to call his or her partner after work. Siri can respond to voice commands and answer any voice queries conversationally.

Despite other voice assistants entering the market, Siri still manages to lead the industry with 45.64% of smartphone users using Apple’s voice assistant. Perhaps it’s the advantage of being the early bird in the voice technology market, or it could be because of the familiarity it has developed with the users throughout the years.

With this, the iOS AI-powered personal assistant is growing and continuously shaping the way of life of consumers and even businesses. This is a sign and opportunity for organizations to tap on their target audience through voice search optimization.

Why Is SEO for Siri Important?

Voice commands are gradually getting more integrated with today’s smart devices, making it more relevant to people’s daily lives and to the tech industry. The primary difference between performing a voice query versus searching on the web is the latter delivers hundreds of results, while voice search gives only one—the most relevant answer.

It was found that out of 35.8% of millennials who use voice-enabled devices at once a month, around 22% of the searchers stumble upon local content and information. Additionally, consumers are also shopping online using voice search.

This brings us to your voice search SEO plan. The next best step? Optimize for Siri voice search queries. Statistics show that in 2017, Siri had 375 million monthly active users, and around 19% of users engage with Siri daily. Since Apple’s personal assistant is the most used voice technology as of date, it’s crucial that your website is front and center when consumers use it to perform searches related to your business.

If your brand isn’t the first search result Siri finds, you’ll likely be invisible. So, if you want your business to thrive in the market, you need to start working on your site’s voice search SEO for Siri.

8 Voice Search SEO Strategies for Siri

Optimize for mobile

Smartphones are the primary device people use to perform voice queries, which is why it’s crucial to make your content intuitive for mobile. If your business website is not optimized for mobile, then you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Smartphones are becoming people’s primary tool for reading and searching. In 2018, about 44.6% of smartphone users in the U.S. used an iPhone, this was expected to remain at roughly 45.2% in 2019. Since mobile and Siri go hand-in-hand, it’s a must to refine your website and make it compatible with mobile interfaces.

Here are a few suggestions:

You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see how your website fares on mobile devices.
Develop a mobile-friendly design that enhances the user experience, such as “chunking” your content, using plenty of white space, keeping the font size and style legible, etc.
Continue improving your traditional on-page and off-page SEO like proper formatting and building quality links to your site.

Make sure your local business listing is accurate

In voice search SEO, it’s vital to establish your local search presence. After all, 46% of consumers use voice search to look for a local business daily. One crucial step when you’re listing your business in local directories is to ensure that each detail about your company is accurate and consistent throughout all online listings and search engines.

A lot of consumers use Siri to perform geo-specific queries, such as when looking for nearby restaurants, local business opening hours, and other business information. Verify your listings, especially on Yelp since Siri often pulls reviews and ratings directly from Yelp.

You need to verify your business listings and ensure that they’re optimized for search to increase the likelihood of your business ranking the top spot of Siri’s results.

Here are a few suggestions:

Enlist your business with the necessary information: name, address, and phone number (NAP). You can add other details like email, business hours, images, etc.
Get listed and claim ownership on Apple Maps, Google My Business, Bing, Yelp, Yahoo, and other directories, to establish your legitimacy and trustworthiness. Respond to queries and reviews to build relationships and prove your credibility.

Use long-tail, conversational keywords

Unlike web queries where people can just type “best barbershop Brooklyn,” long-tail keywords are most relevant in voice search SEO. Consumers performing voice search use conversational language as if they’re talking to a real person, and Siri functions like that. Siri’s algorithm is designed to comprehend and respond to voice queries in human language.

When developing your keyword strategy, focus on long-tail keyphrases that echo how consumers might perform a search to find a business like yours. You can identify your general keyword, then add specific keywords to streamline your target. For example, “laptop repair” is your headword, and your long-tail keywords might cover “top laptop repair shop in Brooklyn,” “laptop repair service near me,” or “best-qualified laptop repair shop in Brooklyn.”

Here are some suggestions:

Check out tools like Answer The Public and Google’s Keyword Planner to help you find the most common questions related to your business, services, or products. These tools can also help you choose the best long-tail keywords for your brand.
Go against the traditional rules and include fillers and prepositions (e.g., “the,” “for,” “in,” etc.)
Put yourself in your consumer’s shoes. What and how do they ask questions related to your product/service? Begin your keyword strategy with adverbs like who, what, where, when, and how.

Produce content that answers definitive questions

Voice search provides just one answer to searchers. With this, you need to curate content that is relevant, valuable, and accurate to searchers.

One way to do this is to break down your content into digestible chunks. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages, or content with a similar format, work perfectly for this purpose. This is because the virtual assistant’s responses are mostly pulled from FAQ pages. These pages also allow you to source long-tail keywords.

When it comes to the answers, you want to provide a snippet solution that is direct and easy for Siri to understand and relay to the searcher. However, you should also want to provide as much relevant information if necessary.

Here are some suggestions:

Create a FAQ page for your website that answers all your consumers’ most frequent and burning questions.
Write the questions as to how people who use voice command might search for it. Phrase the questions in the first person. For example, “How do I use the Online Exchange & Refund/Return Feature?”
Explore your emails from customers, go to Reddit, Quora, and even social media platforms to find new questions you can add to your FAQ page, or create a separate blog post altogether.

Have a formal customer review program

Customer reviews are a currency in the digital world, at least for local businesses. Reviews have the power over a brand and its locations since they’re significant indicators if people will visit your store or if you’ll pop up in a search result related to your type of business.

Search engines favor them as well. Businesses earn their authenticity and trust with reviews. Voice searches are influenced by the quality of reviews your business has garnered. Siri ranks answers based on business reviews when processing about what answer to give to the user.

When a user searches for “best Korean restaurant in the neighborhood,” Siri will compare your business reviews against your competitors. This is one of the factors that are considered before an answer is provided.

Here are some suggestions:

Encourage your customers, especially the happy ones, to leave a review for your business on Facebook, Yelp, or Google My Business. Whether they’re positive or negative reviews, how you handle them builds your brand’s credibility. Unfavorable reviews show how you apologize and remedy the situation to your customers.
Offer a reward program when a customer leaves an honest and quality feedback either on your Yelp listing or on Facebook. For instance, a 5% discount on their next purchase.
Make sure that your brand voice is loud, consistent, and has a friendly tone across all your platforms and locations.

Build your site’s authority

Boosting your site’s authority to establish a solid reputation online is an excellent overall SEO strategy. Developers know that people use Siri to get instant answers, and they’ll stop using it if it keeps providing wrong answers. This is why websites with authority and reputable links tend get picked more often.

Domain authority (DA) refers to a website’s search engine ranking score that assesses factors, such as the number and quality of links, to predict how that site will rank on the search engine result pages (SERPs). It is somewhat your reputation rating. One way to get “picked“ by Siri is to continually build your backlinks and presence through social shares and quality content.

Your site’s DA looks at social media signals. Social shares have a positive impact on capturing audience attention, increasing your traffic, and getting higher rankings. Publishing highly-shareable content boosts your chance at performing well in voice search queries. The average voice search result has been shared on Facebook 1,199 times and tweeted 44 times.

What’s more, voice results prefer content that is packed with information, well-written, and trustworthy. Voice results often promote content that tops the SERPs and is pulled from pages that has an average word count of 2,300 words.

Here are some suggestions:

Place a call to action to encourage your readers to share the page on their social media accounts. Ensure that your social sharing buttons are visible on the page.
Take a look at your technical SEO and assure that it’s up to standards: meta description, keywords, image optimization, heading tags, etc.
Build your backlinks and internal links to build a strong foundation that can help Siri to determine how authoritative your site is.

Get Siri’s attention with schema tags

Schema markups are well-organized codes added to your website to give context and assist search engines in understanding and indexing your site content. These tags are helpful for Siri since it runs a thorough analysis of the user’s intent behind their voice queries. It then finds the closest result possible that answers the question.

For example, if the user asks Siri, “find the nearest laptop repair shop in my area” Siri will check Google and deliver results that uses the “Local Business” schema tag for laptop repair shops. Since rich snippets are also being incorporated into the SERPs, it’s best to include your business’ NAP and opening hours schema tags as well.

This quickly signals search engines and thus, Siri, what the website is about, and how it is trusted.

Here are some suggestions:

Check out Schema.org, an online database of scheme vocabularies, to help your webmaster construct appropriate schema data on your site.
You can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to check if your markup functions properly.

Optimize for Position Zero

When users ask Siri a question, they often speak out one answer. This search result comes from the featured snippet displayed on the first page of the SERPs. Around 40% of voice search results are taken from Featured Snippets—the part above the fold on page one that is called “Position 0”.

When a page secures the featured snippet box, this means they provide the best and direct information that satisfies the user’s query. This implies that you shouldn’t aim and settle for ranking the top spot on the first page, but also aim to land your content for position 0.

Here are some suggestions:

Write your content with proper formatting. You can use subheaders and bullet points to organize your content in a way readers can easily read and understand.
Identify simple questions that require brief, direct answers your target audience are likely to ask Siri—questions that start with who, what, where, when, and how.
Assess your engagement metrics and see if it needs improvement.

Is your business ready for Siri?

In this always-on world, the best thing you can do for your business is to embrace and adapt to this technology to stay flexible and on top of the game. With something as prevalent and as innovative like Siri, it’s essential to align your SEO efforts with this revolutionary advancement and use it to your advantage.

The voice search technology will continue to grow, and you should want your business to grow with it. From a nice-to-have feature, Siri has risen to become a consumer and business essential.

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.

schema markup

What is structured data?

Structured data leads to rich results

Rich results are formerly known as rich snippets

Rich results on mobile: the carousel

Knowledge Graph

Featured snippets

How does Schema.org work?

What kind of items can you mark up?

How to implement structured data

JSON-LD

RFDa and Microdata

Why Is SEO for Siri Important?

8 Voice Search SEO Strategies for Siri

Optimize for mobile

Make sure your local business listing is accurate

Use long-tail, conversational keywords

Produce content that answers definitive questions

Have a formal customer review program

Build your site’s authority

Get Siri’s attention with schema tags

Optimize for Position Zero

It’s a different ballgame

There’s a goldmine waiting to be explored

How to Optimize for Voice Search

1. Know where to cite your business

2. Improve your schema markup

3. Use natural language keywords

4. Tailor your content to voice search needs

5. Create a comprehensive FAQ page

6. Optimize for featured snippets

7. Optimize for “Near Me” Searches

8. ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5)

9. Increase your website speed

10. Improve your domain authority

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