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Do you think optimizing your website for text search is enough to cater to voice searchers? 

If so, you’re in for a big surprise. 

Not only does text search function differently, but voice search users also perform queries on a variety of devices and for different reasons than when they search using text. 

What’s more, many users depend on voice search to conduct their queries more than text. In fact, 50% of the US population uses voice search features daily.

If you’re ready to account for voice search when optimizing your website, stick around to learn more about how it works and five best practices you can implement right away.

Aren’t voice search queries the same as text search queries? 

Nope. 

Voice search isn’t the same as text search. When a user searches for something using their voice, they speak to their devices in a conversational tone, closer to how we speak in real life. 

This means SEOs and marketers need to infuse conversational keywords into their websites to account for voice searches. More on this in a bit.

Is it easy to rank for voice search? 

Also no.

It’s not easy to rank for voice search, mostly because devices that allow voice search typically list one to three results for any given query. In other words, to land one of those top spots, you have to ensure your content is primed for voice SEO. 

While we’ll share some effective tips in this guide, don’t be afraid to reach out to an SEO strategist for additional support. They can audit your website to ensure you’re including the best tactics to cater to voice searchers.

What is voice search? 

Voice search means using your voice to search for something on Google or another search engine instead of typing your query directly into the engine. If you’ve ever used Alexa, Siri, or the Google Voice search on Android to look something up, you’ve completed a voice search!

The technical explanation? Voice search helps you search the internet through speech. Devices can recognize your voice via artificial intelligence (AI) and place the query into a search engine. From there, you’ll get one to three results depending on the device you’re using.

How do people use voice search? 

People use voice search differently depending on the device they’re searching on. 

For instance, voice searchers in need of a quick answer to an immediate problem, such as where to eat or how to change a tire, typically ask their smartphones. 

Whereas people at home who use smart speakers perform larger, more in-depth searches. This may include asking the smart speaker to play a song, shop for a product, or answer a trivia question.

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Then you have car speakers. With car speakers, voice search users typically ask about directions, local-based searches (such as the best store or restaurant in town), and addresses. 

Here’s a list of common voice search devices and the search engines they use:

• Amazon Echo/Alexa: Bing
• Google Home: Google
• iPhone/Siri: Safari
• Android phones and devices: Google
• Google Assistant: Google
• Microsoft Cortana: Bing

What is voice search optimization? 

Voice search optimization means applying SEO strategies to improve your site’s chance of appearing in voice search results. 

Your goal is to get your website in the “hands” of voice search technologies and virtual assistants so they can present it to voice search users with relevant queries. We’ll share five simple strategies you can use to optimize your site for voice search in the next section. 

5 simple ways to optimize your website for voice search 

And without further ado, here are some practices you can put in place to get your website voice-search-ready:

1. Focus on conversational keywords 

Here’s where text and voice searchers really behave differently. 

Text searchers use short and sweet queries, while voice searchers use full phrases and questions. 

For instance, if someone’s on the hunt for SaaS lead generation strategies and they’re performing a voice search, they may ask something like: “Hey Siri, please help me find some lead generation tactics for SaaS companies”. 

Whereas if they’re conducting a text query, they’ll usually stick with short and sweet phrases like “lead generation for SaaS” or “SaaS lead gen advice”. 

In other words, to rank for voice search, it’s pivotal to infuse language in your content that’s used in conversations between real humans — aka conversational language. 

Here are some quick ways you can pull conversational keywords:

• Use a keyword-finding tool, such as WebCEO’s Keyword Suggestions to hunt for conversational phrases (these begin with question words, i.e., “who”, “what”, etc.)
• Look for questions related to your niche inside of popular forums (simply examine the thread titles) — check out Quora and Reddit
• Examine the “People Also Ask” and Google’s autocomplete suggestions for common questions

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Once you’ve pulled your conversational keywords, use them naturally and relevantly throughout your site. You’ll also need to create content around them beyond just using them in your on-page copy. 

This may include content, such as: 

• Blog posts 
• Guides — think product comparisons, in-depth reviews, and ultimate guides on specific topics
• Case studies 
• An FAQ section 
• A Help Center or Knowledge Base 
• Informational videos 

2. Optimize for local search 

If you run a brick-and-mortar business or offer products and services to local customers, you can’t forget to optimize for local search. In fact, 16% of consumers mainly use voice search to perform local “near me” searches.

To optimize for local search, you need to create content that:

• Is relevant to your local area 
• Consistently tells people you’re a local business
• Integrates local keywords 

Use a tool like Ubersuggest to grab local keywords and questions. These might include local landmarks near you as well as words and questions people use to describe the community you’re in. 

Another crucial strategy is including “near me” in your anchor text, titles, internal links, and metadata. This caters to voice searchers who ask their devices for help locating a particular store near where they are. Again, if you’re local, we can’t stress how important it is not to skip out on this easy-to-grab, low-hanging fruit!

3. Aim to capture Google-featured snippets 

Google displays its featured snippets at the top (or top right) of the results page, typically above the organic search results. These might appear as bulleted lists, paragraphs, numbered lists, or something else, like a text definition box. 

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If a featured snippet exists for a query, a virtual assistant will typically read it as the answer to the voice searcher’s question. But, to win over the query, you have to use some muscle to try to capture the featured snippet. 

While there’s no guarantee your content will be featured, here are some simple tips you can implement to increase your chances: 

• Keep answers to common questions and queries between 54–58 words long
• Use headings and paragraph tags to organize your page structure 
• Include steps and instructions to help searchers solve their problems 
• Always target question-based queries in your content
• Take a definition-style approach when applicable 

4. Make sure your site is fast, optimized for mobile, and clearly portrays what you do

Optimize your site for mobile first and make sure it can pass a website speed performance test. 

Include media, such as images, charts, illustrations, and videos to help your audience digest what you do and who you help. This is especially important if you sell a complex product or service or if you sell something that needs a demonstration, such as software.

For instance, if you sell an AI text-to-speech tool, consider using a video presentation maker to craft an explainer video about who your tool helps and the problems it solves. This can help voice searchers quickly grasp how it works and where they can apply it at their jobs or in their personal lives. 

Pro-Tip: To account for the hearing impaired or for people who may be viewing your videos at work or without sound, consider using an AI subtitle generator to auto-populate captions in your videos.

5. Use schema markup 

Ask your website developer to add schema markup to your website’s HTML to help search engines provide more detailed results. 

This includes key business information, such as your:

• Address 
• Contact information 
• Hours of operation 
• Pricing 
• Reviews 

While schema markup is invisible to human visitors, indexing bots use it to better understand your content. This can improve your visibility in text search results and voice search results as search engines will consider your site more relevant.

Wrap up 

And there you have it!

Today we answered some common questions about voice search and shared five best practices you can use to optimize your site for voice. 

Are you ready to cater to voice searchers and improve your site’s visibility? Save this article for reference and begin putting these insights into action. 

That’s it, for now, marketers. 

To your success!

Featured Image by Sayan Majhi on Unsplash

The post How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search: Best Practices and Tools appeared first on noupe.

Don’t want your competitors to get ahead? Ready to perfect your operations? Never want to post a flopped marketing campaign again? 

Then you’ll need access to solid, ongoing insights to inform your business, marketing, and sales strategies.

Enter: Big Data and analytics.

With big data and analytics leading you in the right direction, there’s no limit to the growth and innovations your business can bring forth.

Unfortunately, organizations that don’t recognize the importance of big data (and worse, don’t apply it), can end up wasting time, money, and precious resources on advancements that simply don’t work and are misaligned.  

From helping you mitigate spending to supporting the customer experience, there are endless reasons you need to focus on big data and your analytics efforts. 

If you’re ready to embrace big data and analytics, stick around to learn more about how these two components work, why businesses care about them, and the top five benefits of applying them. 

What Is Big Data? And How Do Analytics Play a Role? 

“Big Data” is a term that refers to a large volume of data and data sets that come in from a variety of publicly accessible sources, such as IoT devices, mobile apps, the cloud, websites, social media, and other channels. 

When talking about big data, you might notice people characterizing it using the following three Vs:

1. Variety: Data that comes in from a great variety of sources 
2. Volume: Data that comes in increasing volumes 
3. Velocity: A high velocity of data 

Businesses rely on big data to collect important user information, such as B2B data on their sales prospects, target audience preferences, what they searched for, their purchasing history, and other behavioral details.

Image Source: Sales.Rocks

Then, the technical analysis happens. 

Businesses use analytic techniques as part of their data analytics strategy to discover key patterns, trends, and correlations.

This final analysis helps businesses make more strategic decisions going forward. 

For instance, using reverse ETL, you can copy big data from your central data warehouse to your operational tools, such as your marketing apps, sales automation tools, support software and other relevant SaaS growth tools.

Your marketing and sales departments can then use analytic techniques to examine the data pulled from these tools to better inform and personalize their future campaigns. No more shooting in the dark!

Which Industries Care About Big Data and Analytics? 

Businesses with large amounts of customer and prospect data all over the world rely on big data and analytics to make informed decisions. 

Image source: Yasir Ekinci

For instance, authentication and SCIM SaaS companies use big data and analytics to understand their B2B audiences’ pain points so they can build better, custom software solutions. 

FinTech and insurance companies leverage big data analytics for risk assessment, detection and prevention of fraud, cost reductions, personalized service and offers, customer acquisition and more.

Marketing agencies use big data and analytics to craft compelling and tailored campaigns at scale and measure their results so they can improve them later on. And retailers use big data and analytics to uncover which products and innovations their target audiences value most.

The Top 5 Benefits of Big Data and Analytics

Here are the top five big data and benefits every organization needs to know for their business intelligence reporting:

1. The Lifeblood of Innovation 

Big data and analytics are the lifeblood of innovation. By uncovering key patterns in big data, you can learn how to improve and innovate your products and services according to your audience’s preferences.

For instance, let’s say you designed an eco-friendly water bottle that comes with a lifetime warranty. Your business is growing, but not as quickly as you’d hoped. After combing through big data, your team notices a major buying trend your audience is participating in: Purchasing filtered eco-friendly water bottles. 

Your next mission? Figure out how to add a filtration system to your current product or add a new product line of filtered, eco-friendly water bottles.

2. Faster Decision-Making 

With the right analytics software, you can analyze big data in real-time. 

For example, enterprise companies receive enormous number of applications for their open job positions. That means parsing through huge chunks of data and comparing all data points between candidates and deciding on how to proceed with each one of them. 

Without data analytics software it would be impossible for the HR department or the talent recruitment team in a big company to identify and employ the right candidates for the job.

Applicant tracking systems help organize all aspects of the recruiting process and are an absolute necessity for anyone tasked with managing candidate information. They help you find the ideal candidates, compare their skills & experience side-by-side and advance them through the interviewing & hiring process.

That means you’ll have invaluable insights at your fingertips you can immediately use to make faster and better business decisions. You can also use these insights to pivot and course-correct if things ever go awry. In other words, real-time analytics also allow you to be more agile in your decision-making. 

3. Personalized, Targeted Campaigns 

With marketing messages flooding your audience’s screens, standing out from countless competitors can feel like a steep, uphill battle.

Image Source: ReallyGoodEmails

By analyzing big data, you can discover your audience’s messaging preferences and core needs so you can design irresistible offers and create personalized email campaigns and targeted marketing ads.

4. A Deeper Understanding of Your Market

There’s nothing like the thrill and impact of truly knowing who you serve. By focusing on your analytics efforts, you can learn about your market in a profound way. 

From uncovering their biggest fears to discovering the “why” behind their dreams, big data can help you understand your audience the way you’d understand a trusted friend.

For example, the dental clinic Dentfix used the Porter’s 5 forces model to identify their:

• Competitive rivalry
• Supplier power
• Buyer power
• Threat of substitution, and
• Threat of new entry

After the proper market research Dentfix gathered huge chunks of information (big data) on their competitors, their target audience, the price range of alternative services in the market, and the ideal cost of quality (COQ) they can offer to their customers. This led them to appropriate the cost for dental veneers and focus their marketing efforts on this specific service.

The benefits of using data analytics go way beyond just making a sale. By looking at the data, you can find out what drives your customers’ decisions and then tailor your products and services to meet their needs. 

Image Source: Divya

You can also discover any pain points that they’re experiencing and use that information to improve your overall customer experience.

5. Improved Operations

Any kind of data can help a business improve its operations. But big data has limitless potential to help a business improve its routine processes.

Noticing your opt-in form isn’t click-worthy? Big data can help you learn which forms your audience flocks to most, so you can design opt-in templates that convert.

Trouble managing your inventory levels? Whether you’re a Fort Lauderdale florist selling flowers online, or an eCommerce enterprise specializing in truck accessories, big data can help you understand which items to keep in stock, how many to store and at what times. 

It can help you organize your entire inventory, plan for new orders, delivery processes and keep your eCommerce site updated for your clients. There’s virtually no limit to what you can improve by analyzing and applying the insights you’ve learned from big data.

Wrap Up 

Big data is radically changing the way businesses operate, compete, and serve their audiences. And with big data comes big responsibility. 

Organizations use a colocation data center to integrate multiple applications, data types and store data sources in a secure, predictable, lower-latency enabling digital business success.

From inspiring product and service innovation to helping leaders make faster and better decisions to delivering a deeper understanding of the customer, there are endless ways big data and analytics can help a business grow.

For good measure, here’s a quick summary of what we covered in today’s article:

• What is big data? And how do analytics play a role?
• Which industries care about big data and analytics?
• The top 5 benefits of big data and analytics 

That’s it for now!

Are you ready to use big data and analytics to transform your business? Be sure to bookmark this article for inspiration. 

To your success! 

Featured Image by Pixabay

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