voice search SEO
The other day I was reading Jeff Bullas' article on the newest SEO trends for 2016 and one thing stood out above all the rest: voice search. I use Google voice search on my mobile phone constantly. I bet you've never considered optimizing specifically for voice search.
Google and other search engines look for different things when doing voice searches as opposed to a typed search. This can mean some big things for your website.
What Voice Searches Look For in Content
Remember in English class when you learned the five Ws? If English class was a long time ago for you (I'm not telling you how long ago it was for me), then I'll list the five Ws for you:
Who
What
When
Where
Why
Just about any voice search question starts with one of these five words. So, it makes sense that voice searches will look for content that has the answers to these questions.
How to Optimize SEO for Voice Search
Google search
Basically, the five Ws are five words used in good writing to describe something to the fullest. If your content is great, it should already be answering at least half of the questions that could be asked in voice search. If your site doesn't have content that answers these questions, you're losing business.
Here are some five W questions that you should already be answering on your website:
"Where is (your business name) located?
"What is (your business name)'s phone number?
"Who owns (your business name)?"
"What does (your business name) sell?"
"When is (your business name) open?"
Once you have the basics covered, it's time to create a go-to area for questions. Write down a list of all the questions your customers have asked you or that you think they may ask. Now, create a Q&A page that answers these questions. That's SEM for voice search gold.
Go a Step Further
content marketing SEO for business
Once you have a great Q&A page up, now you can further optimize your site by adding blog posts that dig deep to really answer each question in detail. Use the question as the title of the post and be sure that your post is more than 200 words to draw in search engines. The longer the better, in fact.
To make the post even juicer to search engines, add graphs, photos, video or any other kind of media to really drive your point home. Not only will search engines love all the extras, but your visitors will, too. When visitors are happy they become customers, so when optimizing your content, keep that in mind.
How to Optimize SEO for Voice Search Infographic
Make Your Site Stand Out in Search Results
Even if your site makes it onto first page mobile results, there's no guarantee it will get clicked on. So, you need to make your search result stand out. To do this, use structured data to help Google add more information to your search result. Google has a great tutorial for optimizing your site with structured data.
SEO is always changing and evolving, but if you get a jump on next year's trends today, your business will be prepared and have an edge over your competitors.
Need help with your content? I'm available.
Share this infographic: <iframe width="769" height="2592" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="overflow-y:hidden;" src="http://alinabradford.com/big-seo-change-for-2016-voice-search"></iframe>
