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Optimizing For Voice Search – Here’s How Important It Has Become

Optimizing For Voice Search – Here’s How Important It Has Become

Voice search has always been considered to be a luxury but it has now become more of a necessity as more people are searching the internet via voice commands. Who would want to sit and type out information when you can simply voice this information and voila? ?

We’ve come a long way in this regard, from virtual assistants with the likes of Siri and Alexa carrying out mundane tasks including weather reports, trending news and scheduling appointments to real-time traffic evaluation and providing accurate pin-point GPS locations. All of this information is communicated without the need to ever press a button or input a command, at least not a written one.

In the digital market, this feature has untapped potential when it comes to closely associating to exact-keyword matches for the spoken query. The benefits involved apply to both the interested parties. Let’s delve a bit deeper into the rising significance of voice searches.

How important is voice search?

When looking at user convenience, it is important to note that thanks to the integration of voice recognition software in multiple platforms, individuals go through versatile experiences via many different channels.

The accessibility and ease of simply voicing your concerns or questions is unprecedented in describing any problem. For example, would you prefer speaking to a doctor when explaining your condition or would you write it down? The answer is quite simple as it is in our nature to seek convenience wherever we possibly can.

Not to mention, the solution to the query obtained is much quicker as well, naturally reducing bounce rates and retaining the potential consumer for longer. This way, the user is satisfied with his answer as it matches closely with the words he uttered, which in turn, is favourable for the business to improve customer relations and feedback.

Here are some statistics to further emphasize on the importance of voice search:

  • 58% of consumers employed the use of voice search for finding contact details among other info for local businesses within the last year.
  • In the US, 71% of individuals lying in 18-29 age group use mobile virtual assistants.
  • Using smart home speakers, around 22% of consumers purchased a product.
  • The future holds an even more promising prospect for voice searches when the concept is applied to marketing strategies:
  • 20% of all search queries online are voice-based. By 2020, that figure is predicted to change to 50% which will make voice search technically as relevant as typed searches.
  • Voice-based smart speaker market globally is forecasted to reach $30 billion in revenue by 2024.
  • Voice-enabled shopping is expected to rise to $40 billion in revenue generated by 2022.

Google Assistant, a service that accompanies Google Home speakers, is currently the most popular voice-based software that supports 17 languages as of now, with plans to reach 30 sometime this year. This allows user to voice their commands in English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Korean and Mandarin among others. Furthermore, it even accounts for differences in accent and phonology of English in different parts of the world including the UK, US, Singapore and India.

When looking at the e-commerce sector, Amazon’s Alexa is the clear winner with 71% of the market share in the US for its Echo speakers compared to Google Home’s 24%. It is safe to say the market is still very unsaturated for smart speakers and voice-based queries with only 39 apps of now supporting such tech. To become a part of the rising trend and embracing the future of e-commerce, let’s take a look at some of the practices or strategies you can employ for optimizing your platform for voice search.

How to optimize your content for voice search?

By now, you realize the importance and need for tailoring your on-site content such that it shows up higher in organic search results when triggered via a voice search.

Keywords

Keyword research has always been important in all forms of marketing and advertising; it is no different when it comes to voice search or commands. However, you need to account for the differences as individuals are likely to be more natural (as opposed to be more direct and specific with typed searches) in their queries so long-tail keywords and more conversational words are suited for a more semantic search.

Additionally, phrases should also be at the forefront of the strategy that you will be employing to target certain keywords for voice search. Google Analytics and the ‘People Also Ask’ section of the search results are good indicative tools for tailoring your keywords to voice-based queries with the latter providing similar recommendations for any given query.

Furthermore, thanks to a greater share of voice searches belonging to local information and details, your digital platform can favour by incorporating words like ‘near me’ and ‘close to my location’ in the meta description and alt texts and tags of your content.

This provides a quick answer to the person’s query for nearby restaurants, educational institutes or petrol stations where your website becomes immediately visible.

Tone and writing

To relate to the user better, you need to speak their language. Often at times, you won’t find an individual speaking out his query in a strict professional tone. Rather, a colloquial and informal approach is usually always favoured and so your content should match this tone accordingly as well.

While altering and tailoring the writing style to the user’s likeness, it is important not to detract from the main goal which is communicating relevant info. The solution should be satisfactory and you should be concise about it.

Q&A for featured snippets

FAQ pages and featured snippets, or the famous ‘0th place’ on the search results go hand-in-hand as Google values direct answers which match closely with the user’s query. Featured snippets are a great way to increase in-bound traffic and brand awareness.

The basics are relevant here with many people asking ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ about a particular product, service or person. Most of the snippets are related to sectors like health or medical information, commerce statistics and how-to descriptions or recipes for cooking.

Remember, above anything else, short and to-the-point precise answers will always be the key to solving the user’s problem in the shortest amount of time so modify your content accordingly.

optimize for voice search

Structured data

Alternatively known as schema markups or rich snippets, these appear below the URL of your website and give a hint to the user about the additional information within the website that they can redirect to then and there.

These details can range from pricing options to contact info, or even the different sections or hierarchy of the web. Such data is also of great use to the search engines as web crawlers or bots find it easier to ‘understand’ your website by making it clear to them the metadata or sitemap so the relevancy of the content can be figured.

Services like Schema.org, SchemaApp and Google’s own Structured Data Markup Helper will allow you not only to boost SEO rankings by 30% but respond better to voice-based searches especially with Schema.org’s Speakable property.

Mobile and speed optimization

Lastly, we need to consider where the actual voice searches are coming from, and how to excel at that particular channel for better results. The answer already being crystal-clear, there’s no getting to the voice-search heaven without passing the SEO river first and that’s why mobile optimization is absolutely necessary.

The most important aspect of boasting an effective mobile version of any site is to make sure your pages load in no longer than 2 seconds. Remember, users are expecting almost instant answers when they use vocal queries and a sluggish site works to the opposite effect, thereby frustrating the user away.

Google’s Lighthouse tool is great in this regard as it has runs a thorough edit of the desktop or mobile version of the site and then provides a comprehensive report including all the concerns to be addressed and potential solutions or recommendations to improve upon them.

Conclusion

Voice-enabled searches are here to stay and increase exponentially as we delve into the ever-expanding capabilities of technology. Quick and relevant responses, in addition to versatile and accessible options only speak in favour of such a feature. To capitalize on it, businesses can employ strategies that unsurprisingly aren’t different to those implemented for favouring SEO rankings.

The same guidelines apply which sees platforms vying for optimizing mobile versions of their site, playing closely to the keyword(s) inputted by the user, Q&As for increased relevance and where voice-search and SEO have no correlation, having an informal tone to better match the expectations of the average customer.


About the Author

Sohail Rupani is a senior SEO Strategist at an Orlando Digital Marketing Company. He specializes in SEO and SEM techniques. He is passionate about technology and loves to analyze the tech industry in his spare time and stay in touch with the latest happenings. He also writes technical articles about SEO and digital marketing. Follow @sohailrupani for more updates.

How to Create Smart Content to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

How to Create Smart Content to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

Only 28% of B2C marketers say their approach to content marketing is extremely or very successful. And only 33% have a documented content strategy.

That’s just not good enough.

Content is the backbone of any good marketing strategy. Yet, the majority of marketers’ attempts are not as effective as they could be.

If this is the case for you, you’re probably wondering: where am I going wrong?

The truth is, you need an intelligent strategy to increase content performance.

Here’s how to improve your content marketing strategy.

1. Utilize Analytics

What’s the smartest way to create content? Use the data you have on-hand to inform the type of content you produce.

According to SEMRush’s Practical Guide to Data-Driven Content Marketing:

At this point, we can state with confidence that high-quality content relies on precise analytics and trustworthy data. When content is not supported by data, you can never be sure that it will directly hit the audience’s pain points and contribute to your objectives.

Essentially, you can guarantee that your content will serve your audience and your brand goals, by using the data you gather from analytics.

Use your data to create variations on your top-performing content.

In Google Analytics, head to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

Here you will find a number of metrics, such as pageviews, dwell time and bounce rate:

google analytics performing contents

Through looking at this data, you can answer some key questions about your content.

What are the most popular content frameworks e.g. ultimate guides, infographics, case studies, etc.?

And which topics do my readers enjoy most?

You can filter the results according to your objectives.

Let’s say, you want to keep people on your site for longer – then you would look at the posts with the highest average time on page:

google analytics time on page

Use this treasure trove of information to create variations of your most popular content.

For example, if your audience digs infographics then you should start creating infographics at regular intervals.

Or if a particular topic performs well, let’s say, “decorating on a budget”, then try similar topics, e.g. “DIY decorating” or “decorating kitchens on a budget” and so on.

The point is, use your existing content to create new content that’s guaranteed to perform well every single time.

2. Refresh and Repurpose Content

Not all content ages well, like a fine wine or a George Clooney.

You need to refresh and recycle outdated content regularly.

Otherwise, all of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into its creation goes to waste as content becomes stagnant and useless.

The cool thing is that repurposing content is a strategy that really works.

One brand got 50% more clicks when they recycled a blog post into an infographic the following year.

Your first job is to update and improve existing content. An easy way to find content in need of a refresh is to use Analytics.

On the same page as above, sort your results by unique visitors.

Find pages that have a high number of unique visitors but also a high bounce rate:

This indicates that this content is no longer relevant and you should update it. We, at Sleeknote, know this better than anyone.

When we relaunched our blog post on Facebook lead ads, we increased our organic traffic by 290.67% in 3 weeks.

facebook leads analytics

You can also repurpose content by converting it into other formats.

Follow speaker, Brian Fanzo’s example:

[I] record my podcast on Facebook Live, upload audio to iTunes, create a blog post, take 4 best quotes from the episode and create graphics for Pinterest, take 4 clips from a month’s worth of episodes and create a 2-minute video to use as a Twitter video.

The moral of the story is: Get the most out of your content, even if it’s gone stagnant.

3. Produce Linkable Assets

You’re always going to have to make earning links a major part of your marketing strategy. Why?

Some SEOs believe links are the #1 ranking factor.

So, if you haven’t been focusing on acquiring links, now’s the time.

The best way to earn links is to create epic, in-depth pieces of content worthy of links, i.e. linkable assets.

Say buh-bye to shady techniques.

Here are a few examples of strong linkable assets:

Infographics

Others use and link to them because they’re simply interesting or they add value to their posts i.e. they explain a complex topic visually and succinctly.

Here’s a nice example from CarRentals.com:

car rentals infographic

Original or Compiled Research

People link to such as a key source or reference point for their arguments.

Or, of course, as a matter of interest.

See this example from MyFitnessPal:

myfitnesspal study example

Long-Form Guides

These are incredibly useful and thorough.

They’re linkable because people would rather link to one strong source than several inferior ones.

Take a look at this guide from The Beard Club:

long form guide

At the end of the day, short, simplistic blog posts aren’t going to cut it when it comes to bagging links.

You have to create strong assets that you can shop around.

4. Show Off Your E-A-T

If you want your content to perform well, you can’t be a basic… so-and-so any longer.

Since Google’s August 2018 broad core algorithm update, your content has to display your E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness).

This is particularly important if you’re selling something or are in a health and lifestyle niche, i.e. Your Money or Your Life websites.

There are several ways you can increase E-A-T.

First, make sure all content is well-researched, using credible facts, sources, and data throughout.

This is a good example from GreenLine:

e-a-t content guidelines examples

Furthermore, you can work with experts or influencers to create content.

In the following example, Etsy’s tips come from a legit health and wellness coach.

In other words, they’re not just randomly made-up by some copywriter.

E-A-T content example

The point here is, if you make everything you write credible and verifiable, your content will rank better.

Key Takeaways

You need to use smart techniques to create content that contributes to your overall marketing strategy.

Firstly, utilize data to find topics and formats that work well for you and do more of the same.

Refresh and repurpose content regularly to get the most value from your content.

Create content that’s actually worthy of links.

And finally, infuse blog posts with E-A-T to up its performance in the SERPs.

Now it’s over to you.

Take the first step and open up Analytics to find your top-performing content.

Emil Kristensen is the CMO and co-founder of Sleeknote: a company that helps e-commerce brands engage their site visitors—without hurting the user experience.

Emil Kristensen

CMO and co-founder, Sleeknote

Featured Image Credits

Image by Diggity Marketing from Pixabay.

Off-page SEO techniques still work in 2019

Off-page SEO techniques still work in 2019

Off-page SEO techniques can be a powerful ally to boost the search engine ranking of your website. We’re not talking just about backlinks, but a whole SEO strategy that includes essentials SEO factors that every competitive business should include in their strategy. Let’s find out more about Off-Page SEO and the latest techniques that work great in 2019.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Unlike On-Page SEO, Off-page SEO isn’t associated with the optimization of content or the website, it rather uses certain techniques to boost the visibility of your website over the Internet. For instance, if Investopedia links with the content of your websites, then some powers of Investopedia will shift to your content link and you will acquire top ranks for that content.

Similar to this there are different development techniques used to rank websites known as Off-Page SEO. Let’s go deeper on the subject.

SEO is a way utilized to enhance traffic and conversion rates of your website by acquiring high position on SERP like Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc.

Now, some CMSs are providing built-in complements with full criteria on the page on the site. For Example, WordPress have plugins such as Yoast, WordLift and SEO Ultimate.

However, for off-page tasks, you need to find out the high domain authority websites and develop backlinks with recent articles.

What is the main difference between On-Page and Off-Page SEO?

There is a significant difference between on-page and off-page SEO. Nowadays if you want to boost your website ranking in search engine results, you must know about all SEOtechniques, and SEO is traditionally divided into two categories: on Page and off Page.

  • On-Page SEO: the on-page SEO techniques (also known as SEO on the site) are meant to optimize different parts of a website and content that affect the search engine rankings. It’s something that you have control over and that you can change on your site.
  • Off-page SEO: the off-page SEO techniques are focuses on increasing the authority of a domain by obtaining links from other websites.

What are the latest Off-page SEO techniques?

Research on the latest content

Interesting content rules the Search Engine Optimization sphere. Developing interesting and worth sharing content is a great method to build a high proportion of backlinks to our websites and articles.

Tip: frequently research and update your content.

Infographics Submission

Develop innovative infographics. In the present scenario, infographics are becoming popular over the web. Submit your infographic to specialized websites and offer reference to your articles and webpages. The dimensions of the image vary with different websites.

Article and Press Release Submission

Submit your articles to press release and article submission directories. You can also add links to your website.

Tip: ensure that your article is 100% unique and is of top-notch quality. Low quality content and content stuffed with keywords holds higher chances of being disapproved. Select an appropriate division and offer a captivating title to your article.

Social Media Engagement

A basic off-page SEO method is social media engagement. If you desire to develop a website’s visibility, engage with people on various social media sites.

Visibility on social media will aid in expanding your business and also supports you in acquiring a greater proportion of backlinks.

Question and Answers

Generally, people look for answers on the web and various webmasters utilize this chance for link building.

Quora, being the topmost question-answer discussing the platform, offers answers to the questions of its visitors.

Tip: create your own account on Quora. Then search for questions associated with the topics you cover. If you have answers for those questions then post them and add relevant links to your website’s content. Quora’s users will check the link to grab more data.

Forum Engagement

Engage in forums that are associated with your website and establishment, so that you can develop a relationship with the community. Answer to threads, questions which people put up and offer recommendations. Utilize “Do Follow” forums.

Guest Post submission

Guest posting is a popular link building method in which content is published as a guest post by other authoritative websites.

Tip: make sure you choose appropriate websites, which are authoritative and fall in the same niche that you are in, and develop interesting articles for publishing and link them your website.

Web 2.0 Submissions

Develop a sub-domain within a high domain authority website such as WordPress, medium.com, blogger, tumbler and such.

Hacks for web2.0:

  • Always share interesting articles and blog posts
  • Upgrade the website on a frequent basis
  • Develop backlinks for already published contents.

Business listing

Google My Business is a product by Google and is available for free. Enhance this for a higher SEO position.

Hacks for a business listing:

  • Write appropriate 250-character description
  • Ensure that the most important piece of information is present in the initial paragraph with the city name
  • Upgrade your content, images, products, and offers on a frequent basis
  • Check reviews and comments and reply quickly in a positive manner
  • Use real product images under appropriate categories.

To sum up

There is a tough competition in the digital markets, and to boost up your position you need an off-Page SEO strategy. On-Page and Off-page SEO tools will help you reach a higher rank for your website on Search Engines.

While using off-page SEO make sure to restrict yourself from black hat SEO techniques.


About the Author

Manan Ghadawala is the founder of 21Twelve Interactive which is one of the best mobile app development companies in India and the USA. He is an idealistic leader with a lively management style and thrives raising the company’s growth with his talents. He is an astounding business professional with astonishing knowledge and applies artful tactics to reach those imaginary skies for his clients.

Follow him on Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Featured Image: courtesy of Diggity Marketing