Voice search has drastically changed how businesses are found on the web today. The day has come when people no longer even have to touch their phones in order to search for a service, their dinner, or even a product or doctor located nearby.
During a Shoptalk keynote Tuesday, Jonathan Alferness, Google’s vice president of product management, shopping and travel, said the new Google Assistant feature is powered by local inventory data transmitted by retailers that purchase ads on Google, noting that 81% of consumers check online first to see which store has product in stock before they make a shopping trip.
Voice search is already present on most phones, allowing you to just say, “Hey, Siri,” or “Okay, Google,” followed by a search command. Fundamentally, this has changed search engine optimization.
When someone searches by typing a query into their computer or phone, they want the query to be as short and succinct as possible. Voice search queries tend to be more conversational, contain more long tail keywords, and are often long and drawn out, rather than being as short as possible.
Talk to a search engine optimization professional and they will likely tell you that long tail keywords are on the rise.
While these were usually included on as secondary keywords, if included at all, they are becoming more and more important as searchers are speaking their search query rather than typing it.
Think about it: When you search on your phone you might type a search like “dog trainer in Sarasota” or “ophthalmologist in Bradenton.” But if you simply spoke your search, it’d be more common for you to search for ‘the best dog training services near me,’ instead.
Voice search is easier than any other type of search, and that means that queries are trending towards becoming more natural overall. It’s the ultimate solution to be able to multitask and use your device efficiently. Where they are talking to Alexa or Siri or Google Home, more and more people are becoming more and more comfortable talking to their devices.
If you want your business to retain or gain visibility in the face of SEO changes, you need to start worrying about voice search.
1. Consider how you are showing up in branded searches
If your business’s brand name is easy to spell and is not phonetically complicated, you probably do not need to worry about whether or not virtual assistants are going to have a difficult time figuring out what people are searching for when they say your brand name.
For example, if your brand is something like “Expert Shoe Emporium,” these are all words that the digital assistant is going to be able to hear and understand.
If, however, your brand name includes a portmanteau, is not a “real” world, or is in a language besides English, virtual assistants are going to have a difficult time bringing up your website.
Take, for example, the internationally-known fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent. You probably have heard that brand name, but your digital assistant probably hasn’t. It will do its best to decipher the sounds, but chances are that someone searching for Yves Saint Laurent, especially if they do not know how to pronounce it correctly, is going to get a mishmash of irrelevant words that sounds sort of like “Yves Saint Laurent.”
What can you do? You’re obviously not going to change your brand name. As voice search becomes more and more sophisticated, it will eventually become better and better at hearing exactly what the searcher is saying. What you can do right now is to research common misspellings and mispronunciations for your brand name and actually include those as search terms in your SEO strategy.
2. Include natural language into your optimization efforts
Think about the difference between how you would type a search query into your computer and how you would ask your phone to look something up for you.
For example, you might type “houses for sale Houston Texas,” into Google, but if you are asking your virtual assistant to look up that same information, you would likely say something like, “Okay Google, which houses are for sale in Houston, Texas?”
The second query is much more natural. Even though we understand that we are talking to a device, we still use our natural speech patterns.
What does this mean for your brand?
It means that if you intend to continue to climb relevant search results, you are going to need to adjust your strategy to include more natural keywords. Look for long tail, naturally phrased keywords that are seeing a high search volume.
Keep in mind that the broad match function does not always account for more natural language, so look for variations on those natural keywords, too. These can be particularly useful for PPC campaigns.
Choose your keywords based on the intent of the search. For example, there is probably little relevancy between the results for a search like “How many people live in Houston?” and “How many houses are for sale in Houston?”
3. Start generating content to answer customer questions
More and more often, you are going to get a customer asking questions of their virtual assistant. Voice searchers usually have more urgent needs in mind. Google calls these needs micro-moments and divides them into 4 types:
For example, they might ask, “How can I remove a dent from my car’s door?” If you have a piece of content on your website or blog that directly answers this question, that is going to be seen as highly relevant and therefore is going to rank highly in the search results.
Or, “what should I do if I get soap in my eye?” Written content that speaks to solutions for these question will help to increase the way your business ranks for voice search.
Many brands have neglected a content marketing strategy, simply because it is less connected to actually making transactions than other types of content,. But as voice search continues to grow in popularity, it is going to become more and more important to have your website full of informational content that answers the questions that your audience has.
This has always been and will continue to be a great way for you to reach out to your audience and build rapport with them, even before they have started looking for specific brands to do their business with.
4. Reviews
This is also about location, as a virtual assistant will search for local results in most cases. With that said, you need to make sure your business is prominent in the Google’s local 3-pack of tops local results.
The number of reviews is also critical for ranking in Google’s local pack. Encourage customers to leave reviews, and don’t forget to respond to the negative ones. For help on all things ‘reviews,’ check out these related articles:
How to Gain 25 New Reviews This Week
How to Respond to Negative Reviews
Why Your Clients Aren’t Leaving You Reviews
How to Respond to Fraudulent Reviews
Conclusion
It looks like the things virtual assistants will be able to do (booking tables at restaurants, buying tickets, etc.) are still going to be powered by search, opening up a new market for small businesses — one where we’ll be competing to become virtual assistants’ preferred services.
As we’ll be fighting to become the restaurant that the Google assistant books or the local plumber that Siri finds first, the competition will likely be much tougher than in today’s SEO – after all, there’ll only be one spot to compete for. Make sure your business is ready!
Cheers!
Voice search has drastically changed how businesses are found on the web today. The day has come when people no longer even have to touch their phones in order to search for a service, their dinner, or even a product or doctor located nearby.
During a Shoptalk keynote Tuesday, Jonathan Alferness, Google’s vice president of product management, shopping and travel, said the new Google Assistant feature is powered by local inventory data transmitted by retailers that purchase ads on Google, noting that 81% of consumers check online first to see which store has product in stock before they make a shopping trip.
Voice search is already present on most phones, allowing you to just say, “Hey, Siri,” or “Okay, Google,” followed by a search command. Fundamentally, this has changed search engine optimization.
When someone searches by typing a query into their computer or phone, they want the query to be as short and succinct as possible. Voice search queries tend to be more conversational, contain more long tail keywords, and are often long and drawn out, rather than being as short as possible.
Talk to a search engine optimization professional and they will likely tell you that long tail keywords are on the rise.
While these were usually included on as secondary keywords, if included at all, they are becoming more and more important as searchers are speaking their search query rather than typing it.
Think about it: When you search on your phone you might type a search like “dog trainer in Sarasota” or “ophthalmologist in Bradenton.” But if you simply spoke your search, it’d be more common for you to search for ‘the best dog training services near me,’ instead.
Voice search is easier than any other type of search, and that means that queries are trending towards becoming more natural overall. It’s the ultimate solution to be able to multitask and use your device efficiently. Where they are talking to Alexa or Siri or Google Home, more and more people are becoming more and more comfortable talking to their devices.
If you want your business to retain or gain visibility in the face of SEO changes, you need to start worrying about voice search.
1. Consider how you are showing up in branded searches
If your business’s brand name is easy to spell and is not phonetically complicated, you probably do not need to worry about whether or not virtual assistants are going to have a difficult time figuring out what people are searching for when they say your brand name.
For example, if your brand is something like “Expert Shoe Emporium,” these are all words that the digital assistant is going to be able to hear and understand.
If, however, your brand name includes a portmanteau, is not a “real” world, or is in a language besides English, virtual assistants are going to have a difficult time bringing up your website.
Take, for example, the internationally-known fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent. You probably have heard that brand name, but your digital assistant probably hasn’t. It will do its best to decipher the sounds, but chances are that someone searching for Yves Saint Laurent, especially if they do not know how to pronounce it correctly, is going to get a mishmash of irrelevant words that sounds sort of like “Yves Saint Laurent.”
What can you do? You’re obviously not going to change your brand name. As voice search becomes more and more sophisticated, it will eventually become better and better at hearing exactly what the searcher is saying. What you can do right now is to research common misspellings and mispronunciations for your brand name and actually include those as search terms in your SEO strategy.
2. Include natural language into your optimization efforts
Think about the difference between how you would type a search query into your computer and how you would ask your phone to look something up for you.
For example, you might type “houses for sale Houston Texas,” into Google, but if you are asking your virtual assistant to look up that same information, you would likely say something like, “Okay Google, which houses are for sale in Houston, Texas?”
The second query is much more natural. Even though we understand that we are talking to a device, we still use our natural speech patterns.
What does this mean for your brand?
It means that if you intend to continue to climb relevant search results, you are going to need to adjust your strategy to include more natural keywords. Look for long tail, naturally phrased keywords that are seeing a high search volume.
Keep in mind that the broad match function does not always account for more natural language, so look for variations on those natural keywords, too. These can be particularly useful for PPC campaigns.
Choose your keywords based on the intent of the search. For example, there is probably little relevancy between the results for a search like “How many people live in Houston?” and “How many houses are for sale in Houston?”
3. Start generating content to answer customer questions
More and more often, you are going to get a customer asking questions of their virtual assistant. Voice searchers usually have more urgent needs in mind. Google calls these needs micro-moments and divides them into 4 types:
For example, they might ask, “How can I remove a dent from my car’s door?” If you have a piece of content on your website or blog that directly answers this question, that is going to be seen as highly relevant and therefore is going to rank highly in the search results.
Or, “what should I do if I get soap in my eye?” Written content that speaks to solutions for these question will help to increase the way your business ranks for voice search.
Many brands have neglected a content marketing strategy, simply because it is less connected to actually making transactions than other types of content,. But as voice search continues to grow in popularity, it is going to become more and more important to have your website full of informational content that answers the questions that your audience has.
This has always been and will continue to be a great way for you to reach out to your audience and build rapport with them, even before they have started looking for specific brands to do their business with.
4. Reviews
This is also about location, as a virtual assistant will search for local results in most cases. With that said, you need to make sure your business is prominent in the Google’s local 3-pack of tops local results.
The number of reviews is also critical for ranking in Google’s local pack. Encourage customers to leave reviews, and don’t forget to respond to the negative ones. For help on all things ‘reviews,’ check out these related articles:
How to Gain 25 New Reviews This Week
How to Respond to Negative Reviews
Why Your Clients Aren’t Leaving You Reviews
How to Respond to Fraudulent Reviews
Conclusion
It looks like the things virtual assistants will be able to do (booking tables at restaurants, buying tickets, etc.) are still going to be powered by search, opening up a new market for small businesses — one where we’ll be competing to become virtual assistants’ preferred services.
As we’ll be fighting to become the restaurant that the Google assistant books or the local plumber that Siri finds first, the competition will likely be much tougher than in today’s SEO – after all, there’ll only be one spot to compete for. Make sure your business is ready!
Cheers!
Published on August 24, 2017
About the Author: Chris Williams
