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How to optimize your content for voice search for Google, Siri, Alexa (VSO)

2019 will be the year that VSO makes a giant leap in search traffic, as voice search is taking over the search engines on many platforms including Google, Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, etc..., how are you or your clients tuning or rewriting or tuning your content to fit with the new narrative?

We invited experts Bethanie, Kent, Mike and Gary to share their tips and tricks.

Bethanie Nonami from Bethanie Nonami, Tampa, FL writes

*Think beyond demographics *

When optimizing for voice, you have to think well beyond demographics. Avatars and demographics have served us marketers well for many years, but it is time to move on. We need to make a shift to thinking about our website visitors in terms of intent. What is the problem they are trying to solve ? If you are the answer to solving that problem, think about how the question would be phrased in a natural (speakable) way. This is similar to long tail keywords. 10 years ago, we would search for dry cleaners. Today, one may search for dry cleaners that doesn't use chemicals. My neighbor may search for dry cleaners near me open at 8pm. Two people have the same problem of needing to find a dry cleaner but their intent and preferences vary. Some of your knowledge of your avatar may come in handy when narrowing in on intent. Consumer behavior is rapidly changing in search so that they receive the right answer faster, without having to click on multiple blue links on page 1. Intent appears differently based on, not only the consumers preferences, but also their level of awareness of the problem and potential solutions. Using your content to fulfill intent is a powerful advantage, when properly understood, in the online and voice search realm.

*Understand the buying journey is complex*

The customer's buying journey is far from a linear path. Customer journey's today may have multiple or even hundreds of touchpoints. Google has talked about micro-moments for a couple of years. Google wants the content to be there, be useful, and be quick. (Google guide on micromoments) To make your content effective, it will serve the right insight at the right moment. In order to do that well, you must validate the major touchpoints in the customer journey. Making assumptions about this process is risky. Any assumptions you have about your customer's journey should be validated with real people. You can validate this process with existing customers, new customers, or better yet, people that didn't buy your products. Validate what content do your prospects need to see or hear before they know your brand is right for them. Do you have the content? Is it appearing on the channel in the medium, they expect to see it on? Voice search is going to be a critical channel for all stages of the customer journey. To harness the power of voice is understanding when one would speak a question and knowing what that question would be so you can deliver the right answer at the perfect moment so that their experience with your brand is more like a natural conversation between two friends, opposed to just a search result.

*Create a Schema Markup strategy*

One of the most powerful hidden secrets is Schema Markup. Many websites online have implemented some form of schema markup to their site but many aren't using the methodology to maximize its full potential. Google has a wealth of information on how to leverage Schema Markup classes for the semantic layer of the web. This is a foundational step in your voice search success. Schema Markup is not often done well by SEO professionals or content writers. It is somewhat technical in nature but there are software programs out there to assist in the implementation of Schema Markup. Schema Markup is the global vocabulary for the largest search engines around the world and is the secondary answer engine beyond the native answer engines built within the platforms (ie Alexa, Siri, OK Google, etc). There are over 800 Schema Markup classes and each website should have at least 5 different classes across various pages such as Events, Organization, Local Business, Person, Product, or Service. Schema Markup creates a stronger relationship between your website content and the search engines.

Kent Lewis from Anvil Media, Inc., Portland, OR writes

Why does position 0/voice search matter?

According to a Stone Temple study, 30% of searches generate a position 0 result, which means plenty of opportunities for ecommerce sites to generate additional awareness and authority. Need additional motivation? In 2016, 20% of Google searches and 25% of Bing searches originated from voice. ComScore/ Campaign predict voice search will constitute half of all searches by 2020.. Echo alone will account for $7 billion in voice transactions-or vcommerce.. March 2017 study by eMarketer, 33% US internet users are somewhat or very likely to make a purchase via voice-enable speakers. Voice searches on Google are 30 times more likely to be action-oriented than text-based searches..

How do you optimize for P0 & voice search?

The first step in optimizing for voice search is to structure your content to answer common search queries on the target topic. One way to identify which pages on your site are best candidates for position zero is to look at your high-performing pages in analytics. For those that generate an Answer Box, you can reverse-engineer the current position zero snippet to gain insights into why and how they are ranking. Beyond restating and answering the question succinctly on the target page, be sure to incorporate the most relevant keywords in the page URL, title and H1 tag. STAT found that featured snippet URLs included an exact match query in the tag 21% more often than regular results. Both voice search and position zero provide significant opportunities for brands not only to own competitive terms as an expert but to double visibility in highly desirable organic search results. Read my related article: Best Practices for Voice Search and Position Zero Optimization Strategies for more information: https://www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org/blog/2018/02/voice-search-best-practices-position-zero-optimization/

Mike Khorev from I Know SEO, Canada writes

Voice search and voice search optimization is a fast expanding area of search engine optimization (SEO) that many companies tend to put in a separate category than mobile search. A big mistake a lot of companies make is focusing on a sole keyword that is made to be a single head term. Instead, what we do is expand the range of keywords that are already in use for mobile search. By adding in contextual words and keywords that would respond to a query asked via voice, our clients’ searchability and discoverability surges upward. The main thing that we keep in mind here is that many people use voice when they are on the move. In these situations, it’s more likely that a person uses contextual words and phrases like “what,” “how”, “where”, and “near me ” to find what they’re looking for faster and get accurate search results from the get-go. Building around these keywords can ensure that a client ranks up in Google when voice search is in use. On top of this, taking on the endeavor of beefing up your voice search optimization also allows for better results across the board, mobile search included. At the end of the day, voice search optimization is the same as SEO, the only difference is the need for context to provide better search results that benefit the client.

Gary Nicholson from Designory writes

We work with automotive clients (Nissan, Subaru, Audi, Infiniti) here at my agency. One thing we have done to date is write FAQ content around each vehicle. The content is data driven. We obtain this data by scraping forums, social media and search engine results to give us insights into what questions people are asking around the vehicles. We then take that data and create questions. We categorize the questions into categories (ownership, maintenance, features, specs, etc.). Each FAQ question has a short explicit (straight to the point) answer and below that is an extended answer. The short answer is geared for voice search queries with a word limit(between 29-35 words) This is so the Alexa, Google, Siri, etc. can then scan the short answer which for us typically shows up in Google answer boxes. So far this has worked well for us and helps answer searchers questions who are in market to buy vehicles. Another thing we have done is take the quick answer type format and create it for each vehicle's overview page with quick answer information (MPG, cargo space, towing capacity, etc.) which in turn gets picked up by Google's answer boxes as well as voice search devices. This has also worked well for our clients.

Thank you Bethanie, Kent, Mike and Gary for your input. We hope you can put these pointers into action and boost your traffic! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section below and we'll send you to the right direction. Mon Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BlogSimplified SEOWriters

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How does ORM (Online Reputation Management) reviews work for (or against) your business SEO?

Reputation can make or break a business, any savvy business owner knows that. In this digital age, Online Reputation Management, ORM is like "word-of-mouth" marketing that previous generations of offline business owners swear by. We invited other successful business owners and website operators to share their insights in this blog.

Oliver Sissons from Reboot Online Marketing writes

Customer reviews have become increasingly more important in recent years when it comes to the SEO performance of all sized businesses. Customer review services (otherwise known as reputation management) are one of the go to additional services offered by SEO agencies all over the globe and for good reason to, they can have a dramatic effect on your sites organic performance. Where, when and how the reviews are published can have a profound effect. For example, reviews posted on a websites Google My Business (GMB) listing is likely to help their local search engine result page (SERP) rankings (providing that they are genuine, relevant, useful and of course positive). Alternatively, reviews posted on third party review sites such as Trip Advisor, Trusted Shops or Feefo can help build authority and trust of the website being reviewed much in the same way that backlinks from trusted sites can. More details of this can be found in the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines released by Google themselves. Besides considering all of the obvious benefits of a positive review profile such as a positive reputation online and increased conversion rates, having unique and fresh reviews posted on your website (be they added manually or even better if added dynamically through the widget of a third party review site) can make the content on your website higher quality and more up to date. With each review adding between 50 - 200 characters minimum to your site (and in many cases a lot more) and having a recent time stamp displaying when it was published, that product page that was uploaded 5 months ago and only contained a 300 word product description can quickly become an authoritative research for anyone looking for the pros and cons or more information on the product in question. The result? Hopefully, your site will rank higher than competitors seeing as it answers searchers queries that much better and provides more value. So now that you are convinced on the SEO benefits of establishing a positive customer review profile online, we need to think about the best strategies to generate, maintain and manage your customer reviews. This will heavily depend on how many new reviews you can realistically generate regularly, how many employees you have/the size of your company and how many review platforms you can be found on. The first thing to consider would be how many review platforms you want to show up on. Of course the more platforms you can be found on, the more time you will have to spend monitoring and managing them. I would suggest picking only a couple (and one of them should be a GMB listing) so that you can easily manage any reviews coming your way without having to log into 20 different sites. Next, you should consider how many reviews you think you will be generating. If you are a local business who has regular face to face contact with your clients/customers then there is little point in investing in automated review software as not only will simply asking your customers to leave you a review when you do see them, this will probably be more effective. In this case, managing your reviews do not need to be too difficult or time consuming as anyone you ask to write their opinion of your business is likely to give you a positive review. Maybe you are an online store though who could expect to receive tens, hundreds or even thousands of new reviews a week. In this case, you will need to make use of online reputation management software such as Grade.us or Reviewtrackers.com which can not only automate the process of asking customers to leave you a review but also help you respond to or dispute any negative reviews you might receive. When using an automated tool it is inevitable that you see a negative review every now and then, the important thing to remember is to notice when such reviews are left and to manually respond to them with a personal touch! Doing so could demonstrate to potential customers reading your reviews that you are engaged and committed to helping your customers or even turn the review into a positive one. Make sure that you decide on some clear goals before opting for any software or review platforms also. If you want to increase your rankings in the local snack pack, you will want to build your GMB review profile more than anything whereas if you want the benefit of a positive review profile alongside fresh, original content on your website you may opt for a video review software that could go that much further in increasing your conversion rates.. Negative reviews and negative SEO, in general, is almost impossible to predict and even tougher to combat but as long as you are dedicated and active online, you stand a chance of not letting it jeopardize your rankings! Unfortunately, companies can experience negative review attacks from competitors looking to disrupt their organic performance and not only are review websites aware of this but Google is too. If you are experiencing such an attack you will want to take a two step approach, first you will want to ensure that you are disputing the negative reviews as it is likely that you can prove that the review(s) have never interacted with your business or purchased your products or services and have the reviews removed as a result. Next, you will also want to make it a personal mission to generate as many genuine, new positive reviews as you can to offset any negative effects of the fake reviews until you can have them removed. Depending on the attack, you may have to keep up this approach for quite some time. One of the best things that you can do today to help you grow, maintain and manage your online review profile is signing up to Google Alerts and set up an alert for whenever your business, brand or product name is mentioned. This will help you discover new mentions of your business which (if positive) you could follow up with asking to leave a review on one of your chosen review platforms. It can also help you keep on top of any negative reviews be they posted on your review platform or on someone else's website. I hope that this content can be of some use for you. Here is a link to the Search Evaluator Guidelines published by Google that is discussed at the end of the second paragraph - https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf.

Jimmy Chan from Pixelicious writes

*Google loves itself* The first step is to sign up for Google My Business. Not only will it allow your customers in leaving reviews, earning those valuable golden stars, GMB is also smart enough to retrieve your ratings from other sources such as Facebook, Trustpilot, Yelp, etc. Potential customers searching for my brand will see my GMB panel at the top . Leverage that prime screen real estate to showcase your reviews, motivating your customers in visiting your website. *Consolidate Google reviews to improve Local SEO and upcoming Local Services Ads* I only ask my clients to leave reviews in Google nowadays for two reasons: 1) Clients are kind enough to use their own time writing one, asking them to leave a review in multiple places will quickly become a hassle; 2) Google reviews hugely influence your competitiveness in Local SEO (Maps 3-pack) and conversion rate. Nobody would bother clicking on a local busineds with 0 review; 3) The upcoming Local Services Ads is a game changer! They will be shown on top of Google Ads (previously Adwords) and sorted based on the number of reviews. This isn't available in my area yet but start accumulating those golden stars now; *Use testimonials to improve EAT and conversion* Testimonials are prominently featured on my homepage to drive conversion but they also benefit SEO due to increase in EAT, also known as Expertise Authority and Trust. A link to my GMB is strategically placed in my footer, in addition to the actual map (showing the number of reviews) in my Contact page, tying everything together. *What to do if you are a victim of negative reputation attack* Luckily I haven't yet to deal with one but here are some practical tips: 1) Prevent it by avoid signing up at too many review platforms. Many require domain or address verification so the less places you allow people to leave reviews, the easier it will be to manage; 2) If it's a legitimate client leaving a poor review, respond promptly with professionalism and grace. Offer to rectify the situation by letting the customer try your product / service again such that they can update the review; 3) If the above doesn't work, maximize your effort in obtaining positive reviews to bury the bad one; 4) Depending on the platform, there are ways to remove illegitimate reviews (victim of attacks). For example, Wedding Wire requires a copy of the contract when there's a dispute to protect the vendors

Michelle Hoglan from Top Hat Creative Marketing, Conifer, CO writes

How to use customer reviews to benefit your SEO?: Working with the client to make sure things are done right. Automated systems are great but we all have filters to avoid that sort of message. Having the personal touch to make sure the owner and staff know how to request reviews, how to control their online pages, and how to create, gather, and post interesting effective content is the difference. It is like knowing you have to exercise and actually doing it. If you pay a personal trainer you exercise, if not most of us do not do as well. SEO is changing and the unique content from 3rd party trusted review sites has become a huge influence in your SEO. I go so far as to say it is a large part of it. Back linking and citations are yesterday's news. A Good reputation management program including reviews and management/posting to your Google, Yelp, and Facebook page will take advantage of any and all SEO work. The reverse can not be said, just because you have good SEO does not mean your business is positioned to take advantage of the main way people find you online. In other words, if your Google page is not optimized SEO will be much less effective. The main thing to do about any negative review and especially a coordinated negative review attack is to not take it personally. It will be personal to the small business owner but taking that public will almost never get good results. Some are able to use humor or sarcasm to reply to reviews, but most fail badly and end up worse off with wildly popular very negative reviews that end up with a life of their own (go viral) because the owner gave the bad review more legs than it had on its own.

For a Coordinated attack by reviews, you need to flag the reviews (in instances where there are only 5 or 10 reviews, or one person writing multiple reviews under different names) in the provider like Google, Yelp, or Facebook. If it is a coordinated attack responding to something the owner said publicly (news, Facebook page, etc) often times the big players, Google, Yelp, Facebook, will take down the mass response to that action. But if they do not, contacting them and letting them know what the situation is will get that process started, Google and Yelp will do this and have for the last 6 months or so. Examples 12 Rounds Brewing in Sacramento - Owner posted on Facebook about the women's march saying go home, and got 100's of bad reviews - this was before this policy from Google and he ended up selling the business. A different post from Renaissance Dental Center in Raleigh NC had a tone deaf post, 99% of the posts were taken down accusing them of racism by Google. Thank you Oliver, Jimmy, and Michelle for your input. We hope you can put these pointers into action and boost your traffic! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section below and we'll send you to the right direction. Mon Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SEOWriters

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