{"id":12689,"date":"2020-05-28T11:02:44","date_gmt":"2020-05-28T09:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/blog\/en\/?p=12689"},"modified":"2022-08-04T11:23:39","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T09:23:39","slug":"content-structuring-voice-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/blog\/en\/content-structuring-voice-search\/","title":{"rendered":"The Role of Content Structuring in Voice Search and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 1996 Bill Gates wrote \u201cContent is King<\/em>\u201d, predicting a world where content would have been the main wealth on the Internet. Although this prediction has been a catchphrase in the contest of digital marketing in the 2000s, nowadays it could sound a little naive. It isn\u2019t, if you rethink content<\/em> separating it from its containers<\/em> and try to understand and follow its law<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t think in terms of pages, think in terms of entities<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Pages are just one of a thousand ways in which content can be rendered and displayed to your users. An entity<\/a> is the real single brick of your content strategy<\/strong>. It can be displayed through a page, but it\u2019s something more. It is a thing<\/em> (or a person, a place, an event, etc.) that has its own properties and relationships<\/em> with other things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding schema.org markup<\/strong> to your content you can define and describe your entities<\/a> and help search engines better understand your content. Let\u2019s say for example you have a recipe: as an entity, this recipe will have many properties such as recipeCuisine, recipeIngredient, recipeInstructions, recipeYield\u2026 and a lot more. All these properties can connect the entity to other entities or just exist as single data points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the left side, you see a recipe on IINH<\/a>, as users would see it on the web page, while on the right side, you have the same recipe as Google sees it through structured data. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s say I\u2019m looking for an apple pie with one single egg \u2014 because I have just one in the fridge, semantic search engines could give me the right recipe thanks to the additional information related to the entity. So, in the end, entities allow you to give a better answer to your potential readers<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The same recipe presented on Google’s SERP in the recipe carousel<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why are entities relevant in this context?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Structured content can help you build Actions<\/em><\/a> for the Google Assistant<\/a><\/em> upon some entity types such as recipes, how-tos, news articles and podcasts. And here is how schema.org markup comes handy for voice search<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving from building pages to creating structured data<\/a> helps us create relationships between entities that matter. Entities are not isolated items, they are all connected into a cluster which is semantically meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that through entities you can feature different angles of a complex thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example connecting all information related to a course or a webinar across multiple pages can be strategic to stand out on Google search<\/a><\/strong> and is the best way to answer to different user intents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Structure your content building your own content model \u2014 and stick with that<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As I said before, entities are just the first brick of your content strategy. Content modeling<\/strong><\/a> is the law that underlies your content<\/strong>. Structuring the content of your website allows you to reuse it in different formats and match different search intents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, the content model of the WordLift Academy<\/strong> allows us to repurpose our content in different formats. Each main content is a webinar which is connected to different data points such as creation date and duration, other entities such as the topics covered during the webinar and the main speaker, and media such as the cover image, the profile picture of the speaker, and the video recording. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Entity-based content model of the WordLift Academy<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All this information can answer to different search intents and function as different entry points to the main content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experiment new formats starting from your content wealth  \ud83d\udc8e<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now, let me tell you a story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, we\u2019ve joined Google\u2019s Mini Apps Early Access Pilot<\/em><\/strong>. The idea was to offer to the user an app experience built into the SERP<\/a> to navigate into the Academy content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I won\u2019t enter into the details of the technological stack used to create this Mini App prototype through Google\u2019s console. What matters here is that, having a structured content we have refined the search for WordLift courses allowing the users to navigate through them by selecting one or more topics of interest and\/or a speaker. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A preview of the WordLift Mini App and some query examples<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As the pilot has been shut down due to COVID-19, you won\u2019t see it on the SERP anytime soon. \ud83d\ude2d But\u2026 we are planning the same structure \u2014 well, with a few changes in terms of technology \u2013 to build an Assistant App for Google. \ud83d\ude80<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So users will be able, for example, to look for all the webinars about SEO<\/a> by Jason Barnard<\/strong> on our Academy just invoking the App.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s the take-away of this story? <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Formats may change and evolve, experiments come and go\u2026 but a strong content model allows you to reuse your content in different environments<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google search is becoming more conversational<\/strong>. To find out how this new scenario is changing SEO, we suggest you read our article: How is Conversational Search transforming SEO<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Voice Search Here to Stay? It is now 2020<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you want to learn more about how voice search is evolving in 2020, have a look at the webinar below, with me and Georgie Kemp getting deeper into this topic. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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