Virginia SEO Practices and Techniques to Optimize for Voice Search

March 16, 2021
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Polly Dom
Posted in Business
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So, your SEO efforts are generating profitable returns and attracting many new site visitors. Does this mean you can stop and settle with your current digital marketing strategy?No. When it comes to SEO, you must not rely on static effort if you want your results to improve and grow exponentially. You can engage a digital marketing agency that has a good track record to help you manage this area.

As the Internet evolves and more digital practices come to light, new SEO trends are also constantly being introduced. This 2021, voice search has become even bigger. This technology has been around for a while now, starting with smartphones. However, it was not as relevant in the marketing world until voice assistants started coming out in the market. The search industry has proven that voice searches are not merely passing trends as they are blowing up into one of the biggest SEO trends today.

If you have yet to implement voice search optimization (VSO), now is the perfect time to revisit your Virginia SEO strategy to fix it. Read on to learn more about how you can optimize your site and content for voice search.

Voice Search vs. Traditional Search

Before you start considering potential strategies for VSO, it will help to understand how voice searches differ from traditional searches. The term “voice” essentially means that the search is carried out through voice command, but you will also notice nuances in the query’s structure and language.

For one, voice searches are more conversational and longer in nature. When users ask their device to search for something, they follow their natural speaking habits, so queries will usually be full questions. This is in contrast with traditional searches, which are often much shorter since they only include main keywords related to the query. Given this distinction, voice search keywords are observably more long-tailed.

Second, VSO prioritizes search intent as users want direct and immediate answers to their questions. Google introduced the BERT algorithm in 2019 to understand searches more accurately and provide users direct answers. Thus, your content must be optimized such that it answers users’ questions directly to have a higher chance of getting top ranks.

Finally, it will also be a good idea to revisit your local Virginia SEO strategy as many people noticeably use voice commands for local searches. Users often include phrases like “near me” in their voice searches to find nearby restaurants, hotels, service companies, and many others. Since this is the case, you must ensure your business listing is optimized to include things like opening times, reviews, and other information that users will look at when researching a business.

SEO Strategies for Voice Search Optimization

Know Your Consumer

For you to understand search intent and context better, you must have a thorough understanding of your target audience. Before you proceed to optimize your site and content, conduct some research and analysis to get insights on how your customers make voice queries.

Create Rich Content

Rich content will always be a must for any SEO strategy, but with VSO, you will need to pay attention to answering questions that address your customers’ most pressing needs. Many marketers have been converting to question-based titles for content and web pages so that they can target their audience’s questions. When creating such content, start by providing a clear and straightforward answer to the question before elaborating on it in the body.

Another noticeable trend with voice searches is that users often get their answers from a featured snippet or similar search engine results page (SERP) feature. Essentially, the page that occupies that position will be the one that provides a rich answer to their question. Thus, you must also optimize for rich answers to boost organic visibility and traction.

Conduct Keyword Research

As mentioned above, voice searches work differently from your traditional ones. Thus, you may need to do additional keyword research to target question-type and long-tail keywords to appear on SERPs for voice queries. Likewise, filler words like prepositions can also be included in keywords since they help make the question sound more natural.

Optimize for Mobile

At this point, your site should already be optimized for mobile due to Google’s mobile-first indexing policy and the number of mobile users today. The same applies to voice searches–the majority of users rely on mobile devices to send vocal queries, so your site must be mobile-friendly. Delivering a user experience is just as important as being able to capture your audience since you naturally want to retain their interest.

Now that you better understand the characteristics of voice searches, don’t forget to follow the top strategies listed that you can employ for VSO.