Is your content ready for voice?

 2018-02-23

Voice search is a popular topic among digital marketing experts. However, many are yet to embrace virtual assistants and other voice-powered technology. If you are to succeed in digital marketing, it is vital to prepare for the upsurge in vocal technology.

Regardless what you use: Siri by Apple, Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa or Cortana by Microsoft, voice represents an ever-increasing share of the search market. Rates are set to increase even further as more people invest in virtual assistants and as these VAs develop. The more people who use them, the more training such models will get and the more powerful they will become.

Keyword research will become more important than ever – especially with regards to Google Home as most of the answers come directly from the featured snippets in the answer box results. Therefore, strategic keyword analysis will become vital for all digital marketers. Winning this featured snippet will become crucial as Google voice search only delivers a single answer. You want to begin by targeting any keywords that already result in a featured snippet and those which you already rank for on the first page.

Once you’ve discovered which queries matter most, then it’s a case of trial and error, focusing on the following:

• What format is the featured snippet? Paragraph, list, bullet, or table?
• How is the current page that is featured marked up?
• Is there a title in the featured snippet?
• Does that page offer a better customer experience than yours? If so, why?

By assessing all of this, you will be able to make the necessary changes to your site to feature in the snippet. It’s important to remember however that it is a long and often painful process!

When it comes to machine learning, the potential of machine learning to marketing is vast. Such learning will enable virtual assistants to understand customer goals with far more accuracy and therefore improve search results for the customer experience.

Google uses both online and offline indicators to determine how credible your website and company is. The higher your credibility, the higher your content will rank. This essentially comes down to three things: your business’s recognition locally (which is determined by online mentions), its reputation (is there positive feedback from customers?), and the level of online engagement. You’ll start to see more of Google’s PAA (People Also Ask) boxes. Google makes its money from advertising so therefore, such examples of interactive options fit.

It’s also important to remember that younger generations are (generally) far better at using voice search as they have grown up with how to correctly phrase on the internet – it comes naturally to them. This is an important issue for all marketers.

It’s time to fully embrace the change and set our SEO targets to also focus on voice search. As technology improves, so does the way we do things!