30-second summary:

• Accessibility underpins stellar user experience and positive brand perception, the key factors that appeal to value-driven consumers
• According to WebAIM, 98 percent of US-based websites aren’t accessible
• Though not a sparkly aspect of digital marketing strategies, there are multiple layers to “why?” and “how?” brands must be accessible across the internet

Marketers develop and execute numerous strategies to broaden their business reach. But one critical factor that most marketers neglect is web accessibility. And this neglect leads to their business being closed off for a large majority of potential customers.

What is web accessibility?

Web accessibility ensures that the internet is accessible, usable, and beneficial for everyone alike. It considers all possible disabilities to ensure marketing messages are delivered to every kind of audience and get the most value out of the website.

As important as it may seem right now, web accessibility is often the last thing marketers think of when building a website. And then, too, it is often brushed under the rug.

Despite the World Wide Web Consortium, commonly known as W3C developing dedicated web content accessibility guidelines to make the internet more accessible, digital inclusivity remains a rarity.

And this unfortunate reality acts not only as an accessibility barrier, but a growth barrier as well.

The value of web accessibility in modern marketing initiatives

Acknowledging and adopting web accessibility enhances the customer experience, opens new doors for your business, uplifts marketing outcomes, and boosts revenue in more ways than just one.

1. Extends your market reach

15 percent of the world’s population is disabled and belongs to a highly valuable market segment with strong spending powers.

With a digitally inclusive web presence, your business interacts with an increased volume of people who it would’ve missed otherwise. In this way, web accessibility brings a whole new community of prospects you can interact with, win as customers and boost your revenue.

2. SEO benefits

Search engines prefer to rank websites that are secure, accessible, and valuable to all kinds of users. Moreover, they perceive digitally inclusive websites as authentic sources of information and favor them in rankings.

As a result, enhancing web accessibility undeviatingly supplements your online marketing with an SEO boost, helping you get to the coveted top position in SERPs. It opens another channel for web traffic that connects you with your target audience.

3. Enhanced user experience

User experience is at the heart of your digital presence as it relates directly to conversions. The basic principle of UX optimization dictates that you research what your target audience wants and deliver it.

In the case of differently-abled audiences, it’s common sense that they would want you to deliver a website they can interact with and benefit from.

By optimizing your website’s accessibility, you boost its usability which is a core element of user experience.

If all other elements of UX are optimized, enhanced usability wins customer satisfaction and gives the prospect a final push towards conversion, contributing to your revenue.

4. Positive brand perception

Web accessibility enables your brand to appear as a strong advocate of digital inclusivity and works to build positive brand perception. Now isn’t that a critical outcome of modern marketing?

Today where people seek a business’s values before engaging with it, a concrete stance on digital inclusivity reflects your values of empathy, compassion, and equal opportunities for all. This builds your community of like-minded people who then contribute to your revenue.

Five-point checklist to get started with web accessibility

For maximum effect, web accessibility should be considered a priority rather than an afterthought and must be included in your digital and marketing strategy.

Following are a few ways through which you can uplift your digital inclusivity and leave a larger impact:

1. Multilingual SEO

Web accessibility not only aims at eliminating accessibility barriers for people with permanent, temporary, or situational disabilities. It also removes linguistic barriers, so people from all cultural and ethnic backgrounds can have equal access.

Given that English is spoken by a meager 4.83 percent of the world’s population, multilingual SEO eliminates linguistic barriers and helps searchers from all linguistic backgrounds to benefit from the internet.

Here’s a guide I created on multilingual SEO to get you started.

2. Voice search

The introduction of smart assistants such as Alexa has pioneered a new era of voice search ubiquity and the consequent web accessibility.

As an excellent avenue to pursue for businesses looking to be more digitally inclusive, voice search unlocks your website’s chances of interaction with people who cannot search the conventional way.

Here are some best practices to optimize voice search SEO:

• Use long tail keywords that are specific, descriptive, and natural for users’ language
• Serve up content that gives direct answers
• Optimize your ‘Google My Business’ account
• Create voice search FAQ pages
• Implement schema which is a code that you can add to your website that improves search visibility

For more depth, check out this voice search SEO guide for trends and best practices.

3. Alternate (Alt) text

Alt text helps visually impaired visitors understand what a web image depicts. Hence image optimization allows web visitors to absorb the information your website offers in its totality and ties back to enhanced user experience.

Tips for using alt text:

• Keep it descriptive and keyword specific, this will show up in case your page loads slow or if there was an audio description needed
• For ecommerce sites, make good use of structured data to give the search engine more specific details about your products’ color, type, size, and a lot more

If you need more details, here’s an evergreen image optimization guide.

4. Hierarchical organization or content using H tags

Hierarchical layout shapes your web content in an easy-to-read structure. A critical part of web accessibility (and SEO), a hierarchical organization can make your website usable and understandable for users with certain cognitive disabilities and people with short attention spans, boosting their satisfaction and your websites’ overall UX.

Check out this guide on optimizing meta tags.

5. Color contrast

Color contrast involves adjusting the color of foreground web elements (for instance, fonts) against the color of the background elements to ensure that the foreground elements, which bear value, stand out and are easily readable for people with visual impairment.

The Bureau of Internet Accessibility has identified a color contrast ratio that ensures that your website is visible and readable for people with color-related visual impairments.

Conclusion

Web accessibility is a necessity, but unfortunately, it doesn’t get the same limelight as other digital marketing avenues that promise increased reach, better perception, and higher revenue.

This reality can work in your favor if you capitalize on the lack of web accessibility and gain a competitive edge by adopting digital inclusivity.

There are numerous marketing benefits of web accessibility, most significant of which may be the development of positive brand perception in an era of value-driven shoppers.

Inclusive marketing initiatives are commendable. But they are only valuable when backed by conscious efforts of enhancing your business’s digital accessibility. So, endeavoring to actualize web accessibility strategies can help you become the pioneer of an internet era where digital inclusivity is a priority.

Atul Jindal is a web design and marketing specialist, having interests in doing websites/apps optimized for SEO with a core focus on conversion optimization. He creates web experiences that bring conversations and transform web traffic into paying customers or leads.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

30-second summary:

• Search engines are laser-focused on improving user experience and voice search plays an increasingly key role
• With 100+ global languages, people are prone to searching in their native language
• How do you optimize your website for multilingual search while keeping a natural and conversational tone?
• Atul Jindal accurately guides you through the process

Google is now recognizing 119 different languages on voice search. Which is great for user experience. But it makes ranking a bit more challenging for website owners, especially those who host multi-linguistic traffic. Website owners must act to cater to these people who are taking a different linguistic approach to search. That’s where multilingual SEO comes in, done with voice search in mind.

But before we begin digging deeper into multilingual SEO for voice search, let us first introduce the search of the future aka multilingual voice search.

What is Multilingual Voice Search?

With the evolution of technology, search engines like Google, Bing, Yandex, and others work towards enhancing their user experience and making the search easier than ever.

Keeping up with these efforts, they now let people talk to them in their own language, understand it and yield the results they were searching for.

Moreover, more than 23 percent of American households use digital assistants, and nearly 27 percent of people conduct voice searches using smartphones. This number is expected to increase by more than nine percent in 2021 alone.

This means, more and more people will converse with Google in languages other than English. Like, a German native is likely to search for something by talking in German. A native Indian could use any of the 100+ languages spoken in India, and a US national may use English, Spanish, or some other language.

This increase in the popularity of voice assistants, multilingual voice search inadvertently leads to an increase in the demand for multilingual SEO for voice search.

But do you need to optimize your website for multilingual searches? Yes. How else will your website reach your target audience that searches in their native language?

Combining Multilingual SEO with voice search

So far, there are guides only for either multilingual SEO or for voice search. However, gauging the rising importance of this relatively new search, we present you with a guide that combines voice search and multilingual SEO.

What is Multilingual SEO?

Multilingual SEO is a practice that adapts your website to cater to your target audience that uses multi-linguistic search. It involves translating the web page, using the right keywords, and optimizing the web page accordingly. We will go into the details below.

Notice how Google yields Hindi results for a search conducted in Urdu/Hindi. That’s because these results were optimized for multilingual voice searches.

Voice search: The search of the future

Voice searches are hugely different from regular typing searches. When typing, you want to do minimum physical effort, that is typing, and get results. Anyway, when speaking, you are not doing any physical effort and just talking. Therefore, voice searches tend to be longer and have a more conversational style and tone.

Let’s take an example

A person looking for a Chinese restaurant will go about it in two different ways when using voice search and regular search.

When typing, this person will type something like “best Chinese restaurant near me.”

On the other hand, when using voice search, he or she will simply say “Hey Google, tell me about the best Chinese restaurants I can go to right now.”

Do you see the difference? To optimize for voice assistants, you have to adapt to this difference when doing SEO.

Adding the multilingual touch to this and you’ll have a multilingual voice search.

From the example above, I searched for the weather in my city.

If I were typing, I simply would’ve typed “[my city name] weather.”

However, when using voice, I used a complete phrase in my native language, and google yielded results in that language. These results showed that they were optimized for multilingual voice searches.

How to Do Multilingual SEO for Voice Searches?

Now, if you want to cater to a global audience and expand your reach. And you want your website to rank when your target audience searches for something you offer, in their own language, you need multilingual SEO.

Below we are discussing some steps to optimizing your website for multilingual searches:

Keyword Research

No SEO strategy can ever start without keyword research. Therefore, before you begin doing multilingual SEO for your website, you need to perform proper keyword research.

When translating your website, you can’t just translate the keywords or phrases. Because a keyword that has high search volume in one language may not be that viable when translated in another language.

Let’s look at a case study from Ahrefs to understand this point.

Ahrefs looked at the search volume for the key phrase “last minute holidays.” They found out it received 117k searches from the UK in a month.

However, the same phrase translated into French “ Vacances dernière minute.” Had a total search volume of 8.4k.

The findings from this case study go to show the importance of independent keyword research for multilingual SEO. Because simply translating the keywords won’t yield good results.

So, what you can do is pick up the phrases from your original website, which we assume is in English and is optimized for voice search. Translate them. Brainstorm additional relevant keywords and plug them into any of the keyword research tools to see their search volume and competition.

Additionally, keywords for voice searches are different from regular keywords as you need to take an intuitive approach by getting to your target audience’s mind to see what they think and speak when searching. And how they do it. Then use these phrases to go ahead with your keyword search and make a list based on high search volume and low competition.

Translation

Once you have a list of keywords you want to optimize, the next step is to translate the content that’s already there on your website and optimize it with the keywords.

When translating a website, the best approach is to hire a human translator who is a native speaker of the target language.

You may be tempted to use Google Translate or some other automatic translation tools. But even though Google endorses its translators, it leaves a subtle recommendation on using human translators. Because robots are yet to come as far as competing and beating humans. At least when it comes to translations.

Additionally, make sure the translator aligns the content with the tone of your original website.  

Hreflang Annotation

Here comes the technical part. Did you really think you can get by multilingual SEO without getting involved in the technicalities?

Hreflang annotation is critical for websites that have different versions in different languages for various searches.

It enables Google to identify which web page to show to which visitor. For example, you don’t want your English visitors to land on the French version of your page. Using Hreflang will enable you to receive English visitors on the English page, and French-speaking people on the page in French.

Another important attribute that will go in your website’s code when doing multilingual SEO is the alternate attribute. It tells the search engine that a translated page is a different version, in an alternate language, of a pre-existing page and not a duplicate. Because Google cracks down on duplicate pages and can penalize your website if you haven’t used the alternate tag.

URL structure

You can’t discuss multilingual SEO, without talking about URL structure.

When doing multilingual SEO, you are often saving different versions of your website under the same domain. This means, you have to create a URL structure for each version, so the search engine can take the visitor to the right page.

When it comes to URLs for multilingual websites, you have many options, and each option has its pros and cons. You can check out how Google lists these pros and cons in the image below.

 Source: Google Search Central

Confused about which URL structure to use?

You can choose any option as per your preferences. According to Google, no URL structure has a special impact on SEO except using parameters within URLs. I personally think using a sub-domain as Wikipedia or Sub-folder/directory as Apple, are the easiest options to create a multilingual site. But if you’re using WordPress then you can use a plugin like Polylang to multi-lingual.

Content style

The content writing style is quite important when optimizing your website for multilingual SEO. your content should be more focused on conversational style rather than academic or complex sentence structures. As said, voice-related queries are mostly in questions format, so faqs, short paragraphs with more emphasis on addressing questions will be better for voice-related search queries.

The importance of multilingual SEO for Voice Search

Now that you know how to set your website for multilingual SEO, you might be wondering whether it is worth all the hassle.

If your website sees a lot of multilingual traffic, you have no other choice than to go for multilingual SEO for voice search because,

1.   Voice search is the future of search 51 percent of people already use it for product research before buying. Therefore, starting with multilingual voice search right now will prepare you to tackle the challenges of search and SEO that the future brings.
2.   Your business can’t grow all that much unless it personalizes its offerings to the visitor. In this case, speaking to them in their own language adds up to a good user experience.
3. Multilingual SEO will expand your website’s reach by catering to multi-linguistic searchers. If your business is global or spread to multiple countries with different languages, and your website is restricted to only English, I bet you must be missing a big chunk of easy traffic. Which would be difficult with English keywords with higher competition globally and keywords difficulty.

Final thoughts

Multilingual SEO for voice search is something that you’ll see all website owners (who receive multilinguistic traffic) doing in the future. Therefore, it is better to start now and get ahead of your competitors.

The key takeaways for optimizing your website for multilingual voice searches are target language keyword search, human translation, hreflang tags, and the right URL structure.

With the right keyword research, a meaningful translation, thorough technical SEO, and by using the URL structure that fits best with your unique web requirements, you can enjoy riding the wave of multilingual voice search when it arrives, and it will arrive soon.

Atul Jindal is a web design and marketing specialist, having interests in doing websites/apps optimized for SEO with a core focus on conversion optimization. He creates web experiences that bring conversations and transform web traffic into paying customers or leads.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

30-second summary:

• Did you know that, as of 2020, upwards of 68 million people listen to a weekly podcast?
•  Your podcast can easily reach more subscribers if you take some time to do some off-page SEO tactics and a few other best practices along the way
• Check out these seven podcast SEO tips to help you get in front of more people and get more subscribers

If you have a podcast for your business, something you’ve probably thought about is how to get more subscribers to tune in to future episodes. 

After all, unlike with traditional blogging where you have a dedicated space for your content, your listeners are accessing your podcast episodes through a third-party streaming service or podcast directory. And these services often carry hundreds of thousands of other podcasts in their network. 

So how can you get your podcast discovered by more of the right leads and future customers?

The answer is simple: podcast SEO. Blog posts aren’t the only thing that stands to benefit from search engine optimization techniques. Your podcast can easily reach more subscribers if you take some time to do some off-page SEO tactics and a few other best practices along the way.

Wondering how to get started and get that podcast out there? Check out these seven podcast SEO tips to help you get in front of more people and get more subscribers.

Seven ways to get more podcast subscribers using SEO

1. Have a clear persona for your podcast

Did you know that, as of 2020, upwards of 68 million people listen to a weekly podcast? Given the year-on-year growth of podcasts, you’re bound to have a dedicated audience in that huge market.

But the growing number of podcast listeners is also a sign of the growing number of podcasts available online. In order to stand out, you’ll have to speak to a specific set of podcast listeners instead of trying to reach just anyone.

This is where having an audience persona is helpful. The persona not only tells you what kind of podcast content your ideal subscribers want to see — but it also shows you their lifestyle, beliefs, and goals.

Source: Optinmonster

Your audience persona doesn’t have to be complex.

When you have a clear picture of what these things are, you can then optimize not only your podcast as a whole but each episode according to search terms your subscribers might be looking for.

If your podcast listeners are interested in sales, for instance, then use keywords that reflect actual searches they may make. Example episode titles that practice proper podcast SEO for this niche include, “How to train your sales team” or “How to master video sales calls”.

2. Choose the right platform

In technical SEO, uptime and loading speeds are important ranking factors. If your website loads slowly too, your page is less likely to rank higher on search.

The same applies to your podcast. Podcast ranking may be influenced by how quickly your platform loads. The less optimally it performs, the less likely people are going to subscribe.

Many podcasters choose to host their podcast episodes on their own website then create dedicated episode pages to increase their chances of getting in front of their ideal subscribers using typical on-page SEO. When going this route, you need to make sure your platform is up to speed.

Educate yourself on different podcast hosting platforms that prioritize site performance for podcast hosting. Not every web host may be well-optimized for podcasts and cause your site to perform slower or have issues with loading audio files. Fortunately, as the podcasting industry grows, more and more web hosts are making a point to add seamless support for podcast episodes and files.

3. Interview industry leaders

One great way to get in front of your audience and get more podcast subscribers is by inviting well-known thought leaders and influencers in your niche onto your show. 

Their supporters and followers are more likely to listen to your podcast if they know that somebody they trust is sharing valuable information on your platform. Having those important guests just gets your ideal subscriber’s foot in the door — they may discover your podcast for the first time and decide to subscribe for more related content.

If you’re a relatively small podcast, build your way up the ladder before reaching out to huge leaders in your industry. Don’t be afraid to reach for low-hanging fruit and asking industry experts with a slightly smaller following on to your podcast. 

Use this as an opportunity to showcase your interviewing skills and grow your existing listenership before getting in front of bigger names in your niche.

4. Incorporate your podcast into your blog posts

We mentioned briefly that some podcasters choose to host their episodes as dedicated pages on a website. Why not really level up your podcast SEO by attaching podcast episodes into SEO-friendly blog posts?

While Google has been making the effort to include multimedia results on search — including, yes, even podcasts and YouTube videos — the reality is that most of the search query results still pull up blog posts and pages the majority of the time. 

Stay ahead of the competition by combining your blog and podcast efforts. There are a couple of options to go about this. First, you can create a blog post around a podcast episode. So after recording your episode, repurpose it into a high-value blog post that you can then optimize with the best SEO practices.

Another way to do this is doing an audit of your existing blog posts and inserting podcast episodes into them. This allows you to make the most of your blogs’ on-page SEO and get your podcast in front of more visitors and potential subscribers.

Check out this example on the FreshBooks blog that inserts a podcast episode inside a blog post. They went with the first route, where they created a dedicated blog post around the main topics that emerged in this specific podcast episode.

To encourage people to actually listen to the episode, you can tease the content in the form of questions or simply highlight what to expect. Mention key phrases and SEO-friendly search terms to make the most of on-page SEO.

5. Submit your podcast to reputable directories

Another way to get more podcast subscribers? Getting yourself listed in the top podcast directories online. Getting on these podcast directories is often straightforward enough, especially if your podcast is already up and running on one platform.

You can choose to submit your podcast to directories like Apple Podcasts or Spotify one at a time, while another option is using services like Anchor.fm to submit your podcast to multiple directories all at once.

Source: Statista

A comparison of the top podcast directories and apps among US listeners between 2019 to 2020, according to Statista.

These top directories are most likely where listeners themselves go to search for new podcasts, so you stand the chance to get more subscribers using this method. With dozens of available options, choose the top-performing apps and services first then slowly trickle your way down the rest of the market.

Also, be aware of any new players that might emerge in the podcast app industry to be at the forefront of their growth. Or if there are niche podcast directories that your specific audience might be on, that can be a fantastic way to reach the right audience without the steep competition.

6. Incorporate this as part of your customer support

If your business has a podcast that creates short, high-value episodes that walk people through your product or service or answer their commonly asked questions, why not incorporate said episodes into your customer support knowledge base?

Users might have frequently asked questions about your product or app, for example. In your FAQs pages and knowledge bases, embed your episodes in relevant pages that will help answer your customers’ queries. 

This can also be a way to humanize and personalize your email ticketing system. Because many email ticket support software allow your team to upload files to send to customers, why not send these helpful podcast episodes in response to their questions or concerns. 

Of course, make sure that the links you send to your customers through support channels are always relevant to their concerns.

7. Cut it up into micro-content

To really drum up your podcast SEO, repurpose your episodes and turn them into micro-content you can share across other platforms. 

For example, choose a segment with a big takeaway or story in under one minute that you can then post on your Instagram feed. Or cut an engaging exchange between guests then post the excerpt on Facebook or YouTube.

The beauty of this tactic is that you can create multiple pieces of micro content from just a single podcast episode, so you’ll be able to make endless content for social media. 

Use soundbites as excerpts, create graphics based on quotes from the episode, turn your main topics into viral-worthy infographics — either way, it’s a great way to not only create content for other platforms but to especially grab attention and bring awareness to your podcast.

The podcast Happier in Hollywood creates micro-content by taking excerpts from their recorded episodes and turning them into videos with subtitles for Instagram.

Source: Happier in Hollywood

Key takeaways

Getting more podcast subscribers can seem like an uphill climb, but remember that your content creation efforts have to be punctuated by a solid promotion strategy too. Podcast SEO makes sure that your podcast is seen by the people who’d love to follow your podcast the most. Aside from basic podcast SEO, use the tips in this blog post to help you boost those search results and get your podcast heard.

Kevin Payne is a content marketing consultant that helps software companies build marketing funnels and implement content marketing campaigns to increase their inbound leads.

30-second summary:

• An optimized content and voice search SEO is crucial to rank higher in search engines.
• Long-tail keywords are the backbone of voice searches.
• Mobile optimization goes hand-in-hand with voice search optimization.
• FAQ sections are your best friend.

Voice search is fast gaining popularity among online users. It is easier, faster, and more conversational as compared to traditional search.

As per ComScore, half of all smartphone users are engaging with voice search technology in 2020. Google also reports that 27% of online users are using voice search on mobile globally.

But to make it work, you will require optimized content and focus on voice search SEO. In this article, we will be digging into the eight best practices of optimizing just that.

Before that, what exactly is voice search SEO?

In simple terms, voice search SEO is a technique that optimizes the content, phrases, keywords, metadata, and more to enable your voice search to rank on top whenever a user asks questions. It mainly focuses on the natural language of users and delivers them answers accordingly.

The new 2020 voice search trends

1. Smart speakers are driving voice search adoption

As per emarketer, smart speaker usage is estimated to grow at a compound yearly growth rate of approximately 48% to meet the demands of more than 76 million users by 2020.

And it is said that 40 million Americans currently possess a smart speaker. Clearly, more and more households are using smart speakers these days.

Earlier, only a handful of products such as Alexa and Siri were popular. But over the years, voice technology has improved tremendously. As a result, many tech companies are releasing their own smart speakers.

2. Improvement in voice AI and machine learning (ML)

There is a remarkable improvement in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and it has changed how users interact with their smart devices and search the internet.

For instance, with Google’s RankBrain, you can recognize words and phrases to predict forecast results more accurately. When it encounters a new phrase, it makes its best guess and gives answers accordingly.

3. Used to search for local products and services

People are increasingly using voice search to search for local products and services. According to statistics, 58% of people have used voice search while finding information about a local business.

Also, as per Google reports, searches for “near me” business has increased drastically over the last few years. It is indeed great news for local businesses.

4. Increase in popularity of voice SEO

To emerge at the top, marketers are regularly fine-tuning their SEO strategy to optimize for voice search. Considering that Google’s voice recognition has 95% accuracy, businesses wanting to attract more inbound traffic to their site have to implement voice SEO.

And Google alone is not working on perfecting voice recognition to make the most of voice search. China’s iFlytek speech recognition system has an accuracy rate of 98%, and the team is working to achieve 99% accuracy.

5. Voice search is more mobile than ever

Google’s voice search is now available in more than 100 languages on mobile devices.

Moreover, statistics suggest that mobile phones are used nearly 40% more than smart speakers for voice search.

And with mobile phones, people usually use voice search in different environments like at the office alone, at a restaurant, at a party, or any other location.

This trend of voice search on smartphones continues to rise – all thanks to advances in speech recognition technology.

Here are some best practices to optimize voice search SEO

1. Use long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are specific keywords that your target audience is likely to enter (and in this case speak) to the search engine.

People have been using long-tail keywords for a long time and seeing brilliant results with their search rankings.

Thus, it’s a great idea to use long-tail keywords to optimize voice search for a website.

In fact, according to statistics, they make up 70% of all web searches.

In voice search, you can add long-tail keywords in a more conversational tone and specify what users are looking for.

The good news is that you can use plenty of online tools to search for relevant phrases and add them to your content. Some of them include:

• Ubersuggest
• SEMrush
• HubSpot Content Strategy Tool

2. Implement schema markup

Also known as Structured Data, Schema Markup is a code that you can add to your website. It will allow search engines to understand your site’s content, what it means, and why it is there.

Schema Markup can also help search engines robots crawl and make it rank higher on search engines. Further, you can use it for improving and getting comprehensive search results that boost the user experience.

Just have a look at the example below

The second search result has a star rating and a publication date, which has been added using Schema Markup. Since the result is illustrated, the users are likely to click on it readily.

You can also implement schema markup SEO best practices to provide more information about your site to the search engines and rank higher.

3. Curate content that gives direct answers

Users don’t do voice search like they do a text search. Instead, they will probably be making longer and more specific queries.

As per research, there has been a 61% growth in question keyphrases.

The statistics reveal how people are using question keywords to ask queries through voice search.

Thus, it’s an excellent idea to curate your content to answer their queries. However, make sure that you write great content that is valuable to your target audience. It will satisfy your user and, at the same time, increase the chances of appearing in featured snippets.

4. Optimize your Google My Business page

Another way to rank higher for voice searches is to optimize your Google My Business page.

Actually, it’s one of the easiest ways to get discovered by your target audience when they voice out their queries in Google. You just have to make sure that your content, images, and information are complete and precise.

Additionally, implement your prevailing local SEO strategy along with targeting how users are phrasing their queries. As per reports, 76% of smart speaker-users carry out local searches at least once a week. Thus, local SEO is as crucial as entering relevant info and images.

5. Work on increasing domain authority

Websites with many links pointing to them rank higher in regular search. And it is the same for voice search.

A study by Brian Dean, which examined 10,000 Google Home search results, found that sites with more links rank more often in voice search.

As soon as you put in your voice query, the Google search engine will provide results from high authority websites.

Here are some of the ways to increase your domain authority to rank higher in voice search:

• Optimize your on-page content
• Apply optimal internal linking strategies
• Remove bad and spammy links
• Make your site mobile-friendly

6. Make your site mobile-optimized

Everyone surfs the internet via smartphones these days since it’s convenient and accessible. It is only evident that most users will do their voice search from mobile.

The graph below shows the different environments where people use voice search.

Since voice searches are mostly done via mobile phones, mobile optimization is crucial.

Some useful tips for mobile-optimization site include:

• Optimizing your mobile pages with AMP
• Checking your site’s speed using GTMetrix and working to boost it
• Creating mobile-responsive web pages
• Taking advantage of responsive landing page builders
• Creating content to be more readable on smartphones
• Regularly testing your website with Google’s mobile-friendly test tool

7. Optimize site speed

Your page speed is going to play a significant role in voice search SEO. Studies show that the pages that rank higher in search engines after doing a voice search load in 4.6 seconds. They are also 52% faster compared to average pages.

Thus, optimizing your site speed is essential if you want to rank higher in search engines.

To increase your page speed, you can implement tricks like:

• Using a CDN
• Choosing a great web hosting platform that provides fast page load speed and uptime
• Optimizing the image size on your website
• Limiting the number of plugins
• Using website caching
• Reducing the use of web fonts

8. Create voice search FAQ pages

Crafting voice search FAQ pages will benefit you a lot since question keywords are very popular.

According to statistics, voice search results come more from FAQ pages than desktops.

The best part is that FAQ pages can rank for several voice search queries. Moreover, they are concise and answer precisely what the users are looking for.

Therefore, Google usually pulls out the answer from your FAQ page whenever users do a voice search.

Wrapping up

Voice search is convenient and straightforward to use. No wonder it is gaining popularity among online users. But unless you optimize your voice search for SEO, users won’t be able to find your content.

Implementing all the eight tips mentioned in this article to optimize your site for voice search SEO can help you a great deal. These are tried and tested tips and will definitely work.

Plus, when you optimize your site for voice search SEO, you will be optimizing your website in general and rank higher in search engines either way.

30-second summary:

• Twitter has unveiled a new Voice Tweet feature, an exciting new way for brands to connect with fans and followers by leveraging the power of the human voice.
• Voice Tweets can add context and nuance that strictly visual language can’t capture.
• Voices.com’s CEO David Ciccarelli shares five tips for building a strategy that caters to audiences’ ears, not just their eyes, and creating successful Voice Tweets.

In a 2009 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey recalled how the platform got its name. He said the definition for the word “Twitter” was perfect because it “was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds.’ And that’s exactly what the product was.”

This may have been true then, but Twitter evolved from a website full of inconsequential information to one of the world’s largest news sources. Today, the social media platform broadcasts everyone’s messages, including individuals, Fortune 500 companies, and even global superpowers.

Just as the site itself has grown and changed, its content features have evolved as well. The Twitter team added support for GIFs and videos along the way, and tweets are now 280 characters when they were originally confined to 140. Most recently, Twitter announced its new Voice Tweet feature. Voice Tweets represent the social media giant’s first departure from the visual realm. It’s an exciting opportunity for brands to connect with their fans and followers in a whole new way.

The value of voice

Communication that’s strictly visual can leave out a lot of information. That missing context can often lead to separate interpretations by different readers or viewers, and occasionally those interpretations are decidedly at odds. Voice, on the other hand, allows users to utilize all the nuances and complexities of inflection and tone, letting them convey additional meaning and subtext that eliminates ambiguity and enables deeper connections with the audience.

Twitter’s new auditory feature ergo, Voice Tweets are an exciting opportunity for businesses to enhance their brand touchpoints with platform users by leveraging the power of the human voice. The key is putting in the effort and getting the rollout right the first time.

To build a strategy that caters to your customers’ ears instead of their eyes, follow these five steps when creating Voice Tweets:

1. Appoint an audio ambassador

In addition to the CEO, select or hire one or two people to represent your brand as audio ambassadors. These people (and their voices) will be synonymous with your company, so they should be adept at connecting with audiences. Your ambassadors will be responsible for all audio operations and can assist in accessibility usage for those who are deaf and hard of hearing. In the U.S., 15% of adults 18 and over have some trouble hearing, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Create threads under your original Voice Tweets with transcriptions to improve accessibility and utilize SEO keywords.

2. Be clear on key messaging

To create coherent messaging, you need to clarify both the broad themes and specific details. Being clear on messaging can determine what keywords people associate with your brand and what future searches they’ll make. What words or phrases do you want to be associated with your company? What would you and company leadership consider off-brand? Make a list and distribute it to all parties involved to ensure that the right messaging is top of mind. Then, plan to update your individual messages with audio cues that are specific to each campaign.

3. Define your style

Kantar TNS reports that almost 80% of Twitter users follow one or more brands. That’s a sizable audience that represents a major opportunity, but it also means you’ll need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Your Voice Tweets should establish an auditory identity while staying consistent with your brand’s style and personality. Define your style by determining your tone (for example, conversational or professional) and preferred word choice.

4. Create high-quality recordings

It may come as a shock, but most voice-over recordings happen in home studios. That’s not just a recent symptom of the COVID-19 pandemic — it’s a trend that’s been happening for the past decade. You don’t need to rent out an expensive recording studio to start publishing your brand’s first Voice Tweets, but you also don’t want to record in a busy home with lots of noise and distractions. Find a quiet space to record — whether it’s a closet or a spare bedroom — in order to improve the audio quality.

5. Listen to audio clips before publication

Have you ever recorded a voicemail greeting and then played it back? If you’re like most people, you probably thought you nailed it on the first take only to listen in horror as you “umm” and “ahh” your way to the end. Voice Tweets should be no different, and your audio ambassador should always listen carefully to ensure that each tweet conveys a simple and coherent message that exemplifies your brand. Before anyone presses publish, verify that the recording is something you’d be comfortable or even proud to hear over and over.

As a nod to the original character limit, Voice Tweets give your brand 140 seconds to get your message across. Before you wax poetics about whatever strikes your fancy, focus on crafting each tweet in a way that builds and supports your brand’s overall auditory identity. Capitalizing on a new feature is a large undertaking, but these five steps should give you a good place to start.

David Ciccarelli is the founder and CEO of Voices.com, the largest marketplace for audio and voice-over products and services in the world with over one million business and voice actor registered users.

The new schema SEO is useful when asking for specific topics and news related to a particular brand or happening. The returned results are then read back by Google Assistant with speakable texts.

Google’s new feature is currently intended to provide users with a summary of a story’s key points but has a later possibility for expansion.

Available documentations from schema.org  points out to the text to speech conversion of a news article and available online documentation supporting the new feature.

What is Google’s new speakable schema markup?

Current technology is heading towards speakable-friendly smartphones and gadgets supporting voice searches. Google’s speakable schema markup tool allows businesses to indicate content sections that support voice search technology.

This new Google algorithm will allow businesses to pick the most crucial information relating to their business, highlight such content, and give them better visibility to their intended audience.

This is similar to how featured snippets work only that the information is delivered via voice assistant that reads to your website content to the visitors.

The new Google speakable schema markup is currently in its beta version, which can only be accessed by news publishers. It also has a limited audience reach, exclusively servicing the US for now and only working with Google Home devices including the Google Assistant.

How does Google’s speakable schema markup work?

Similar to the traditional way we get our websites to rank, optimizing your voice searches require you to input significant information fragments featured in your SEO campaign.

It means sections of your campaign material can be optimized for voice search.

The schema helps Google’s algorithm determine the importance of your chosen content fragment with your specific niche, helping it rank in the SERP. Content that is found relevant by Google, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Home streamlines that information and finds a way of reading them back to your website’s intended audience.

The way Google pulls up that information is based on its sophisticated algorithm. News publishers, though, are solely responsible for selecting text fragments that they want Google to feature.

The search engine will determine how relevant the information is and how it relates to their user’s voice search queries before voicing it out.

The current setup of Google’s speakable schema is only accessible to news publishers, allowing them to highlight parts of a news feature in voice search optimization.

Though the technology is still in its early stages, news publishers have the option of presenting the most accurate answers to any internet user’s query.

In its initial state, Google’s speakable schema is a powerful way of obtaining information about recent news and current events.

There are several points to consider when having your content optimized for the speakable schema. Most of these requirements fall under the precepts of meeting the demands of current and possibly future inquiries.

• The topic should focus on one subject and storyline with understandable and relevant writing
• All the information presented in the publication must be accurate in all aspects and must be factual
• The text should not contain ad campaigns
• The content cannot contain vulgar words or hate speech directed towards a person or entity
• The news should include the author’s information, including the publication data and contact details

Speakable content is available to businesses creating content but is currently limited to news publications. The points highlighted are just some of the specifications for the new Google schema to ensure all new information meets industry standards.

How will the speakable schema affect SEO?

The tech industry continually shapes itself with innovations like the speakable SEO feature of Google to accommodate existing and future demands.

The rise of voice-enabled searches primarily impacts the search engine optimization landscape, making it more demanding for businesses to ramp up their website performance.

Speakable is still in its beta form, and there are currently no effects on a website’s SEO performance. But as the industry adapts voice searches, we can see speakability becoming one of the forefronts of ranking in the Voice Assistant tools.

As such, the speakable schema will have a tremendous impact on how we use the internet and search for information. This predicament will also be another burden for some companies as they start figuring how to provide better services to their customers.

More and more companies will fine-tune their website content, so it adopts the voice-friendly features of Google. It entails restructuring current content and shifting their market options to include voice-search enabled gadgets and devices.

How to prepare your business for the speakable schema markup?

In the meantime, speakable is still in its early stages. The tech giant continually tests and further enhances its speakable schema markup to strengthen its capabilities. Nonetheless, it won’t take long before companies, and their website starts feeling its effects.

Getting ahead of Google’s SERP race will give your company a better chance of landing the top spots considering your site is at par with the latest algorithm demands of most search engines.

Here are the best practices to implement so your website content meets with the future SEO demands or hire an SEO agency to make it easier:

• Create coherent and conversational statements on your website relevant to your business niche. This will help stay ahead with speakable-type technology and make it easy for you to determine which information effectively relays to your intended audience.
• Using short and understandable sentences makes them acceptable to your website visitors. Remember that most people have only a minute of attention span, and you want to capture your audience in that small timeframe to get their interests.
• Writing in a conversational voice tone is the best way to reach a broader scope of website visitors. You want your audience to get a full grasp of what you are offering, so a short, concise, and simple-worded statement will get them glued to what you are providing.

How do you use speakable markup?

To start using the TTS suitability of Google’s speakable schema, you need to follow four critical requirements set by the search engine.

1. Following all guidelines, including the technical side, content, webmaster, and structured data protocol, is the starting point of enabling the audio playback capabilities of your website texts
2. Include Google’s speakable structured data semantics into the code of your web page
3. Test and approve your chosen structured data
4. Submit the content for eligibility and onboarding process

What are the benefits of speakable schema markup?

There are a lot of undeniable benefits to using Google’s newest schema platform. Though the speakable SEO is available for an online publisher, for now, future expansions will include almost every business with a website.

Among some of the benefits of using the speakable schema include:

• There are better opportunities for improving SERP ranking positions
• A speakable schema improves brand recognition
• It increases the click-through-rates of your website
• Position your website for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa’s voice search
• Increase your website’s social media following
• Provide your audience with a sneak peek of what your content offers without looking at their device screens

Depending on your market niche, Google’s upcoming speakable schema offers your business with industry-related benefits. This includes getting more views for your music and videos, getting more job applicants on your page, or increasing the popularity of a specific product or service.

But all these benefits are what we can foresee in the future. The fact is, Google’s speakable schema is still in its easy concepts, and it is not clear whether the tech giant would put the feature outright. The Beta version of the new algorithm already allows news publications to read featured information off a webpage.

Conclusion

The future of speakable markup depends on how the general population will receive it. Adaption of the new schema would mean expansion outside of its current scopes to include all aspects of the web. Additionally, industry acceptance of this new schema will only be derived depending on how universally the markup is put to use.

And as voice search becomes an accepted method of looking for information on the web, we might see Google pushing the new schema into its existing ecosystem. Regardless if these search engine changes are seen as a threat to existing methods or an opportunity for advancement, we can look at it as an answer to the changing needs of internet users.

Emily Browne is a web content enthusiast with three years of experience in SEO writing. She can be found on Twitter @Emilyrownee.

Here are my biggest takeaways.

1. Have a narrow focus

This tip comes directly from Joe Pulizzi. I saw he and Robert Rose were relaunching their This Old Marketing podcast, so I reached out to see if he could share any wisdom.

I explained that ‘Ask Amanda About Marketing’ involved me (and sometimes guests) answering various questions people had about digital marketing.

The first thing he said? Narrow your focus.

There are hundreds of marketing podcasts out there, so in order to provide value that isn’t duplicative of what people can already access, you have to hone in your objective. Who exactly do you plan to help, and how exactly do you plan to help them?

He had a point. While I loved the first iteration of the show, it was topically scattered, and I knew we could benefit from honing in our purpose.

We landed on ‘Cashing in on content marketing’, a show all about proving content marketing ROI and getting buy-in. 

Armed with a narrow focus, it was time to book guests.

2. Don’t hide behind the mic

It’s convenient to be able to podcast from home and have conversations with incredibly smart people all over the world through Zoom or Skype or some other platform.

But don’t forget to attend in-person events. While you can cold-pitch people (and we certainly have), you can build much better connections when you meet people in the real world.

Of the first 11 people I have booked to be guests on the show, seven of them are people I met in the last year at marketing events.

Because when you meet people in person, you’re forming a much stronger connection than people you sometimes interact with online. There’s still value in online interactions, of course, but nothing surpasses good ol’ fashioned IRL (in real life) meeting.

If you don’t have a lot of event budget, many conferences have free or cheap community passes, like Inbound. Also, check for local events; some companies host events and meetups in their cities, and these community connections can be just as important. For example, Orbit Media hosts affordable monthly events in Chicago.

3. Do your research

Once you book guests, it’s time to figure out what you’ll talk about. 

My personal style is to keep it conversational, but you still need to set up a framework of questions so you make sure the chatting stays on-topic and that your guest feels guided through the conversation.

I generally have at least five questions that shape the direction of what I want to talk about. If the person has written blog posts, books, or conference presentations that are relevant, I read those and ask questions that refer to those materials.

Not sure if these materials exist? Ask them in advance. 

Give them an idea of what you want to talk about, but allow them to switch up the angle based on what they’re passionate about and have expertise in.

For example, when talking to Mark Schaefer before having him on the show, I told him we could talk about his newest book “Marketing Rebellion,” but he suggested focusing on “The Content Code” since it might be more in line with the podcast’s goals. 

When you touch base before the show, you’re able to establish directions that are better for your audience. And you can prepare accordingly. I brushed up on both books and asked questions about referencing material from them.

As a result, Mark said,

“Thank you so much for reading my books and being so well-prepared with your questions – it was a pleasure.”

Don’t underestimate how much prepping for the interview can set you up for success. You want your questions to be different from everyone else’s, otherwise, you’ll end up with a show that doesn’t stand out.

Conclusion

If you follow this advice – focus and differentiate your podcast’s mission, meet marketing professions IRL, and go above and beyond when preparing for interviews – you’ll be setting a solid foundation for your podcasting endeavor. 

But most importantly – Keep your audience in mind. You’re not creating this for yourself, or your company, or your guests. You’re creating it to help, inspire, or inform your listeners. Don’t lose sight of that, and you’ll continue making the ideal decisions for your show.

Amanda Milligan is the Marketing Director at Fractl, a prominent growth marketing agency that’s worked with Fortune 500 companies and boutique businesses.

Part of the reason for that is that they’re just not as familiar with all the things technology can help them with. Elderly people have a low frustration tolerance for learning how technologies work which is a big reason why voice assistants like Alexa are catching on with this audience.

With devices like Amazon Alexa or Google home, they simply speak their request and the device responds. No swiping or clicking required.

Voice-first technology is a game-changer for seniors

A San Diego pilot project conducted by Davis Park, the executive director for Front Porch Center for Innovation and Wellbeing, set up an Alexa system in a retirement community with 50 residents where most residents were over 80 years old and observed the results.

About 75% of the residents used their smart devices regularly. Instructors focused on helping the residents to connect with the technology. For example, they set up the technology so they could use voice commands to listen to their favorite types of music or watch or listen to their favorite sports teams. From there they were able to branch out and learn how to use the technology to turn the lights off and on, change the temperature, adjust the volume on the music, listen to audiobooks, and get medication reminders using only their voices. 

Voice-first technology quickly generated excitement for them because it allowed them to have greater control and independence, which means they could be less reliant on others. They also felt safer, less isolated, and more connected to friends, family, and the community. In essence, voice-first technology gave them a greater quality of life. 

What possibilities does voice technology bring?

The frontrunners of voice technology in the U.S. are Amazon Alexa and Google Home. There are, however, even more companies that have Voice devices available.  We’re also seeing third party apps on these platforms, built specifically with older Americans in mind.

For example, Alexa has Ask Marvee which is a free service where a senior citizen could send out a morning blast to their loved ones by saying, “Alexa, tell Marvee to send a message saying I’m alright.” Everyone on the list gets a text, email, or both. Seniors can also use Marvee to ask for social visits and get news from their family members. Users can expand their list for a nominal fee.

Another app called ‘Ask My Buddy’ uses voice commands to send an alert via text, call, or email to designated people in times of crisis or trouble. It’s accessible through Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Microsoft Cortana. It’s the next best thing to calling 911.

Alexa also works with LifePod, a proactive voice-first technology that initiates interactions based on preconfigured schedules. The app prompts seniors to follow their routines for taking their medications, checking in with caregivers, staying hydrated, getting exercise, or anything else at a scheduled time, including playing music. If the user doesn’t confirm or respond, the app automatically alerts a caregiver. The app also uses artificial intelligence to recognize irregularities in a senior’s condition, behavior, or sleep patterns and alerts their loved ones.

ElliQ is much like a smart speaker that sits on a nightstand or table. It was created by Intuition Robotics with the senior audience in mind. ElliQ will send or play messages to loved ones. If you ask ElliQ to play some music or pull up some photographs of the grandchildren, the app responds accordingly. If a senior is lazing the day away, ElliQ will suggest that they take a walk or get up and get moving. 

The company incorporated robotics technology into ElliQ which is reflective of a human’s body language. When a senior speaks to ElliQ, it swivels its “head” towards the senior. The device also lights up when it’s speaking. These features increase engagement between the user and the device without trying to mimic a human-robot.

The objective is for the device to be a service bot that doesn’t replace a human companion. Dor Skuler, CEO of Intuition Robotics, states that older adults who are participating in their pilot program are connecting to it. Customers give ElliQ a female gender and classify her as a new entity in their home – somewhere between a person and an appliance.  

Benefits of voice-first technology for the senior population

The goal of voice-first technology is to provide value for the people who use it. By communicating with voice for normal everyday tasks, it’s convenient, saves time, and it’s cost-effective. The value for seniors increases exponentially. For the senior who needs his or her hands to get around using a walker, it’s far easier to ask an electronic app to turn the lights on or off. They no longer need to scour their home looking for a smartphone to call their loved ones every day and tell them they’re doing okay. They will no longer have to put notes up around the house reminding them to take their medication. 

If a senior slips and falls, all they have to do is call out to their app and it will alert someone to send help right away. Photos and videos of close family and friends provide a way to cheer up lonely seniors. With an app like ElliQ, they can see photos or videos of their family members any time they choose, without having to ask someone to dig heavy boxes out of the attic, so they can sort through photographs. 

For family members of aging loved ones, voice-first technology gives them an all-important peace of mind. They can wake up every day and get a message telling them that their loved one is okay and doing well. There is less fear about their loved ones falling and getting injured and not being able to call for help. It eliminates the worry of envisioning them lying helpless on the floor for hours before help arrives. It’s helpful to know that their beloved seniors feel less isolated because they can gain access to audiobooks, music, and television just by making requests out loud. 

How digital marketers can create strategies for seniors by using voice

Do you know what a voice strategist is? Well, I didn’t know what it was either until I met Scot and Susan Westwater, the co-founders of Pragmatic Digital at Global Marketing Day in New York City. When I asked them about how to create strategies for senior care using voice strategy, their first tip was clear – have a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish and what your audience needs from a voice experience. Once you’ve identified what it is that you want to accomplish, it’s easier to develop different strategies to reach your goal. 

For example, if your goals are safety in the home, it’s important to know what their daily schedule looks like. Do they have a consistent routine? Does their daily routine vary on the weekends? Do caregivers come in one or more days per week? Are seniors capable of taking their own medication? Are they able to reach light switches and temperature controls? Can they see the digits on the thermostat? If they go for a walk, how long would they normally be gone? Are they able to take their medications as prescribed? Are they strong enough to lock their doors at night and unlock them without assistance if someone comes to the door? 

By answering those questions, a digital marketer can help some to choose the right digital solutions to accomplish the customer’s goals. 

Using voice-first technology to address health proactively

In many cases, people would live longer if they could make an early diagnosis based on symptoms in the early stages of a disease or illness. It’s possible for voice-first technology to play a role in recognizing symptoms and recording when they first appeared. Electronic apps could play a role such as giving a call to action such as, “Call your doctor…” making it possible to diagnose issues earlier and treat them before they become problematic or life-threatening. 

How to maximize the potential for communication in the senior population

Communication is an important factor when considering your objectives. I find it helpful to list your business objectives and your audience’s objectives and assess where the two meet. What does your message say? Is it clear? You have to think beyond the message and consider who your audience is. The senior population has very different needs than an active young couple or a busy single mother with multiple schedules to manage.

In my recent interview with Scot and Susan Westwater, they noted that they think of voice-first technology as audience-first technology. If you ask it a question, you’re going to get a direct answer. It’s much more senior-friendly than traditional methods of search, where you type your question and have to click around for answers.

The future of voice-first technology in senior care services

As I consider the future of voice-first technology and how it could greatly improve the senior care service industry, I can’t help but consider the barriers that stand in the way. The first obstacle that digital marketers have to overcome is trying to get the seniors on board with understanding that there is more to benefit than to fear with using voice-first technology. Many seniors live on fixed incomes and they may feel that technology is out of reach due to cost, without realizing how cost-effective it is. 

Finally, there’s always hesitancy when switching to something new. For many individuals, it’s easier to take a wait-and-see approach than it is to be a pace-setter. 

The key to employing technology in the senior care industry is education, awareness, and a focus on safety and well-being for senior populations.

Karina Tama is a contributor for Forbes, Thrive Global and the El Distrito Newspaper. She can be found on Twitter @KarinaTama2.

As a consequence, this has had an impact on search engine optimization, where following SEO best practices is essential for most businesses in the current era. Internet voice search could be set to disrupt SEO conventions, so businesses would be well-advised to stay informed of the changes and plan accordingly.  

The rise of voice technology

The introduction of IBM’s Watson in 2010 paved the way for voice technology devices. Watson is a powerful voice recognition question-answer computer system that stunned the world as a super-intelligent, thinking, and speaking robot that was able to beat Trivia grandmasters on the TV quiz show, ‘Jeopardy’. In the following year, Google launched its Voice Search and Apple released Siri for the iPhone 4S, the first digital personal assistant. 

This was followed in 2014 by Cortana from Microsoft and Amazon Echo, a voice speaker powered by the personal assistant, Alexa. Google Assistant was launched in 2016, as well as the smart speaker Google Home. Initial figures showed Amazon Alexa to be leading the market, though Google Home is forecast to take the lead by 2020. Other prominent digital assistants on the global stage include Alice from Yandex, and AliGenie from Alibaba.  

Voice recognition technology has significantly improved since its inception. Google claims 95 percent accuracy, while the Chinese iFlytek speech recognition system has an accuracy of 98%. 

Voice technology has also spread to devices that fall under the umbrella term, the Internet of Things (IoT), such as a smart TV, a smart thermostat or a home kit. While it may be possible, internet voice search doesn’t have direct applications for most of these devices yet, and by far the greatest share of searches are currently made on either a smartphone or a smart speaker.

Twenty percent of queries on Google’s mobile app and Android devices are made with voice, while 31% of smartphone users use voice at least once a week, according to Statistica. 

Media analytics firm Comscore predicts that half of all online searches will be made through voice by 2020, while Gartner predicts that in the same year, 30% of online searches will be made on devices without a screen. This suggests an enormous rise in voice search, as well as the increased adoption of smart speakers. Earlier this year, Juniper Research predicted that 3.25 billion voice assistants were in use – a figure they forecast to reach eight billion by 2023. 

The effects of voice on SEO

Voice is, therefore, transforming our approaches to technology and the internet, but what impact is it having on search engine optimization?

Natural language

With improved and reliable voice recognition systems, voice technology is well adapted to follow everyday language use, so users can give commands as if they were speaking to a human. For any areas of potential confusion, emerging technologies are seeking to improve the user experience. The 2018 Internet Trends Report by venture capitalist and internet trends specialist, Mary Meeker, found that 70% of English language voice searches were made in natural or conversational language. 

Keyword length

Spoken language usually isn’t as concise as the written word, so queries will be longer than the three or four keyword searches more common to graphical user interfaces (GUI). Voice searches currently average 29 words in length, according to Backlinko. SEO strategists will need to adjust by using more long-tail keywords, with the added benefit that the longer the keyword phrases are, the higher the probability of conversion. 

Source: Neilpatel.com

Question words

Voice searches will more frequently include the question words who, which, when, where, and how, that are usually omitted in written searches. Marketers need to ensure content can deliver accurate and relevant answers to voice search queries, and distinguish between simple questions and those that require more comprehensive answers. Queries that can be answered with very short responses typically won’t generate traffic to a website because Google will often provide the required information via featured search snippets. 

According to SeoClarity, 20% of voice searches are triggered by just 25 keywords. These include question words and other commonly used verbs, such as make, do and can, as well as key nouns and adjectives, including a recipe, new, easy, types and home. These can be worked into SEO strategies, and question-form queries can show user intent to a higher degree. Marketers are therefore able to optimize content according to questions of a higher value. 

Source: Brightlocal.com

Semantic search

As opposed to lexical searches that look for literal matches of keywords, semantic searches attempt to find the user’s intended meaning within the context of the terms used. This understanding can be aided by user search history, global search history, the location of the user and keyword spelling variations. 

Google’s RankBrain is an artificial intelligence system designed to recognize words and phrases in order to improve internet search outcomes. This independent thinking quality of RankBrain helps it take query handling to a more sophisticated level. Hummingbird is another Google technology that helps natural language queries. It helps search result pages be more relevant based on context and intent, causing relevant pages to rank higher. 

Local search

Voice technology has brought an increased emphasis on the use of local search. Consumers are three times more likely to search locally when searching by voice. Research carried out over the last year shows that 58% of consumers find local businesses using voice search, and 46 percent use voice technology to find information on local businesses daily. Marketing strategies should account for this change and optimize for “near me” queries. 

SERPs

Around 75% of voice search results will rank in the top three positions in search engine results pages (SERPs). Most voice searches are answered by Rich Answer Boxes shown at the top of results pages. Featured snippets are included in 30 percent of Google queries. These are extracts from any website on the first page of SERPs, and brands are given credit in voice search as well as usual GUI searches. Brands only need to be on the first page to be used in featured snippets, rather than position zero.

Ecommerce

Ecommerce is especially impacted by voice, as consumers are much more likely to use voice to make purchases. Sixty-two percent of voice speaker owners have made purchases through their virtual assistant, and 40 percent of millennials use voice assistants before making online purchases. Digital assistants – and the best ways to optimize for them – should, therefore, be a priority for online retailers. 

Adapting to voice search

With voice technology impacting SEO in various ways, here are a few recommended steps brands can take to adapt accordingly.

1. Google Voice prioritizes quick-loading websites, so brands should ensure images are optimized, files are compressed, response time is reduced, and the site is fully responsive. 
2. Content should be optimized with long-tail keywords that reflect popular queries used in voice search. Focus on natural language. 
3. Featured snippets are summary answers from web pages that may be used in position zero. To optimize content for this, include identifiable extracts to be featured and make content easier for Google to read by using H-tags and bullet points. 
4. Structured data and schema markup provide more information about a brand and drive traffic. They help pages appear in rich snippets, which will increase the chances of being the first result delivered in voice searches. 
5. Local information for your brand should be provided to meet the increased search volume for local businesses with voice – using Google My Business will help.  
6. Increasing domain authority will help with search rankings – this can be improved by including high-quality links.

The impact of voice technology on SEO is certain. Given the huge rise in the adoption and use of voice, the impact on businesses will be considerable. Those brands that can anticipate and stay ahead of the changes before they happen will surely reap the benefits in years to come.

Roy Castleman is founder and managing director of EC-MSP Ltd., a London-based IT support organization focusing on small and medium-sized businesses.

After all, in the world of voice search, simply getting onto the search engine results page becomes insufficient. What brands need is to find their way into what’s become known as the “zero position”—that singular best response generated by a voice assistant in regards to a natural language query.

Most marketers are watching the ascent of voice search with obvious interest, but few are sure exactly what they should be doing as this brave new world unfolds before their eyes. The good news is that there are very concrete steps that can be taken right now to better position brands for the voice-dominated future. If you focus on the following three fundamentals today, you’re going to be in strong shape tomorrow.

Optimize according to Schema

Schema represents a foundational means of ensuring your online content can be found and understood by web crawlers and properly ingested by the major search engines’ algorithms. This is true today, and it will be true tomorrow. Unfortunately, given the ever-increasing complexity of the marketing technology landscape these days, too many marketers have lost site of this important priority. To succeed—or even survive—in the world of voice search, the schema need to be a top digital marketing priority.

In the most basic sense, schema is an agreed-upon structure for how online content should be organized in order to best be understood by search engines. The major search players of the world have codified the best practices of engagement via Schema.org, a joint effort focused on creating and maintaining schemas for structuring online data. These days, optimizing web pages with schema is a critical first step to succeeding in organic search.

The beauty of Schema.org is that it’s supported by all of the major search engines, and these are precisely the companies that are currently writing the future of voice search. We can expect to see similar structures dictating voice search results as we do in the currently established schema. Thus, best practices for site optimization today will remain the best practices for the future. However, neglecting these best practices in a world where the zero position can make or break a brand will become all the more vital.

Focus on featured snippets

Google’s Featured Snippets aren’t new, but they’re far more important in the world of voice search than in traditional web SEO. Featured snippets are designed to help people answer questions quickly in a way that naturally aligns with how people search with their voices. In other words, it rewards content that presents information in an obvious Q&A format versus being optimized for keyword searches.

To improve your chances of reaching the zero position for a given query, structure your content for featured snippets. In a blog post, for example, this might mean asking a question in the opening paragraph and ensuring it is answered in that same paragraph in 50 words or fewer.

Sure, the blog post can go on to discuss the subject in much more detail. But what a voice search engine will care about is being able to answer a user’s question in a succinct, straightforward way. Give them the questions and answers they crave.

Get your profiles under control

In preparing your brand and its digital assets for a voice-driven world, don’t forget about your third-party digital profiles. Again, this is a best practice in the search world today, but it’s going to become even more necessary for survival in a future dominated by voice search. After all, when people search for information relevant to your business, there’s a good chance the first place the search engine turns won’t be your website.

It will be a third-party profile that succinctly describes your business and, in particular, the details of nearby locations. After all, voice assistants powered by companies like Google also have their own business listings for your locations—and they’re highly likely to turn to those first when providing information back to users.

If your business information is inaccurate or outdated in your third-party profiles, reaching the zero position in a voice search with that information could be more harmful to your brand than not being found at all. So as you think through your digital strategy for a voice-driven world, be sure to get back to basics. Structure your content correctly. Give vs the answers they want. And above all, make sure your information is updated and accurate anywhere the algorithms might find it.

Bart Bartolozzi is Director of Product Marketing at Synup, a location intelligence tool that helps businesses with their local marketing, discovery, and engagement.