Ranking in Voice Search
Voice search is reshaping the clients’ journey. People of all ages and backgrounds are gradually using this technology to search for companies and make purchasing decisions.
According to research, 48 per cent of UK customers search for a local business via voice on a smartphone. And 76% of those mobile users conduct local voice searches on a weekly basis.
While conventional SEO strategies are about bringing a SERP on page one, the voice search paradigm is different. Competition is tough when a consumer does a voice search, the computer just showcases the very first search result back to them. Unless they ask the system otherwise, they have little visibility into the rest of the SERP— other results are irrelevant.
Businesses who are proactive in optimising voice search can obtain a significant advantage over other organisations. Here we give you ideas to help you do exactly that, and will guide you on how to build voice search rankings. Let’s dive in:
Update and Claim Your Business Listings:
46% of voice searchers are searching for a local company regularly. Speech searches are also used to identify local businesses so they can be conducted hands-free when the searcher is preparing to leave their house or while on-the-go.
Despite the fact that voice searches are frequently used to locate nearby businesses and places, the latest Uberall Voice Search Readiness Survey showed that less than 4 per cent of enterprises have reliable details across their web listings for voice search queries. This is troubling, as this knowledge is frequently drawn as the top organic answer for local searches.
To ensure that you are prepared for voice search, you can order the Google My Business listings for all of your places to ensure that the information is up-to-date and compatible with what is on your site. It doesn’t only make it more challenging for users to communicate with you—it even sends mixed signals to Google’s algorithm, making it more challenging for you to rank.
Rank in all kinds of Voice Search
Apart from Google Assistant and Siri, who use Google’s search tool, Microsoft’s Cortana and Alexa voice assistant receives search results from Bing. There are more than 150 million users of Microsoft Cortana in thirteen countries, all of whom can put voice searches on their smartphones. This broad cross-section of Bing voice searches can’t be overlooked. In order to maximise local Bing searches, advertisers can also ensure that their Bing Company Lists are up-to-date with all locations.
Modifying listings for all your places across various search engines can sound like that of a long manual setup. But technologies like Yext empower you to simplify your initiatives and refresh local listings across hundreds of channels simultaneously.
Optimise the quality of your featured snippets
When web searchers don’t inquire about a local company, featured snippets—or queries answers, Google drags directly to the SERP page—frequently ranked at the top of the search engines. In reality, according to SEMrush, 60 per cent of all responses retrieved from voice searches are snippets. There are three types of snippets—paragraphs, lists and tables.
-How to rank featured snippets? You must begin by making sure that you adhere to all of the essentials of SEO. Your content can’t be placed into a featured snippet until it’s already on the first page of search engine results or Google. Make sure your website has an easy interface to use and scroll, make your pages mobile-friendly, tailor your content around the user’s target, update your content frequently, and build a clear internal connection framework.
Next, use your keyword analysis tool to define search terms that are phrased as questions—these often deliver featured snippets performance. You can then edit the relevant links on your site to address these questions. If none of your pages matches the objective of the query, consider developing blog posts that answer it or attaching it to your FAQs list.
In particular, make sure you’re formulating your posts in a manner that’s welcoming to both users and search engines. H1 tags can only be used with the main title of your article. The key subheadings for your article should be H2 tags. Each heading that comes under H2 tags must be H3s. It’s a smart solution to develop a search question that answers the H2 title. Below that, write the message you’re aiming to rank as a featured snippet in the text box. The search engines would automatically remember this format.
Lastly, when you write a comment that you want to rate as a featured snippet, be brief. As SEMrush analysed more than 10 million keywords, it was found that most of the snippets were between 40 and 50 words only.
Use Schema Markup to better interact with search engines and voice assistance.
Schema markup, also regarded as structured data, is a unique language used to connect with search engines. You can write it as an HTML code or activate it as a plugin.
By putting a schema markup on your website, you can help search engines more quickly identify critical information about your organisation, such as your hours of service, venue, phone number, ratings, news updates, logo, and more. This knowledge is highly relevant for a local business or nearby search queries. View the entire list of schema markups which you can link to the schema.org site of your company.
Schema markups can boost your search engine rankings and enable you to get rich snippets on the SERP pages. Rich snippets vary from featured snippets in that they provide more in-depth details than just text. For example, they can include reviews, amounts, dates, photos, social profiles, and more. These add-ons boost dedication and generate higher click-through rates.
Bottom Line:
SEO optimisation is a continuous process that needs continual improvement, mainly when the results are not immediately visible—it takes some time for search engines to crawl your content and your site to acquire authority. But when you make voice search optimisations, ensure that you’re continually updating the metrics to see what’s going on and integrating those learnings across your site. To learn more about voice search rankings, contact us info@reputationace.com
