Your business probably has a website, and maybe you are even optimizing for SEO, but is there anything else you should be doing? At Phantom Copy, we could think of a few things that you should consider including something called voice search. Should you be optimizing your website for voice search? Let us help you navigate this evolving field of SEO to learn what you should be doing.
What is Voice Search and Why Should You Care?
Voice search starts from a simple idea. More and more, people are using their phones or smart devices to search for things out loud. These searches, by their nature, take on a much more conversational tone. It’s the difference between searching “Chevy Bolt color options” and “What colors is the Chevy Bolt available in?”
Both of the above searches have the same intent but may yield entirely different search results. This typically means that results for the first were optimized with the short version and results for the second were optimized for the more conversational tone associated with voice search.
Do You Want to Show Up For Voice Search?
We understand this concern as well. Many of the people that use voice search, especially with smart devices, may not actually land on your website. They could be looking for just a quick answer. Why would you want to show up for that?
Why wouldn’t you? If someone is going to ask a question, especially one that may eventually lead to a buying decision, why would you not want to be the one that shows up? Even if they do not click, the information will be sourced to your website and brand. It’s one more chance to put yourself in front of potential customers.
Do Many People Use Voice Search?
This is a very valid question, however, it may not matter. In truth, though voice search is growing in popularity, so too is being conversational with search engines even with written queries. Moreover, search engines are often assuming the question and looking for pages that are optimized for the question rather than the search term.
Is Voice Search Going Away?
Voice search is set to only grow in popularity so much so that people are trying to rename SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). The advent of AI will only make voice search more prevalent as people stop treating their search engines like tools and start treating them more like people at least like chatbots.
How Do You Optimize For Voice Search?
Okay, so you should do it, but how do you do it? In truth, many of your common pages, pages that people that come to your website and would commonly navigate to, don’t need a huge injection of voice search optimization, though it can be good to phrase some of your subheadings in the form of a question when and where it makes sense to do so. There is a place where voice search can help you draw in traffic and answers to search queries the best, and that’s often a blog feed.
Read More: How Long Does Content Marketing Take to Make a Difference?
How to Optimize Blogs For Search
At Phantom Copy, we firmly believe that every business in every industry could benefit from having a blog on its website. Blogs have the power to cast a wide net and you can afford to dedicate a whole blog post, indeed many blogs, to answering voice search queries.
You start with a question. It should be one that many people will search for, one that is related to a service you provide either directly or indirectly, and it should be one in which you can provide a nuanced answer.
This last item may make it seem like yes or no questions, or questions with quick answers are not viable, but that’s not true. Take this question for example: “Should you recycle your e-waste?” The answer, especially if you are an e-recycler, is almost certainly yes. Sounds like a short blog, and short blogs do not get traffic even if they answer a question.
Instead, you should think about what else people are going to want to learn about the topic while they are there. Example sub-topics include What is e-waste? Can you recycle e-waste in the blue bin? Why does e-waste need special handling? How much harm can e-waste do in a landfill? And more. In this way a single blog can be optimized for not just one voice search, but several.
Not only will providing this information give you enough to fill out a whole blog easily, but it will also encourage people to click through. Even if they got an answer to their initial question, they likely have even more questions now, and you could provide them with the answers.
Build Your Brand With a Blog Strategy
Optimize For Voice Search Today With Phantom Copy
If it sounds like a lot to come up with and create blog posts optimized for voice search, then you still don’t know the half of it. In truth, behind every well-performing blog post, more work and research often goes into writing the optimized headline that goes into the writing of the blog.
This type of SEO writing requires a special type of expert. Namely the experts that we work with at Phantom Copy. If you want to rank in voice search, get a Phantom on the job. You can get a Phantom today!