Over the past few years, online searches have gone from being predominately fragmented keywords, to queries being phrased in the form of a question: Where can I buy diamond earrings? When is the next full moon? Why are my ears ringing? How can I improve my website’s organic search rankings? People are speaking search phrases more often to find the information they are looking for. This is due largely in part to the growing popularity of virtual assistants, such as Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa.
These assistants aim to make our lives easier by allowing us to speak our questions rather than taking the time to type them out. While voice search has been around for a while, new devices such as the Amazon Echo make the availability of using it even more seamless in everyday life. Just this past month, Google released their new version of voice search, Google Assistant, along with a new mobile device, Pixel (yes, we LOVE the name and tell everyone they named the phone after us), and accompanying smart speaker, Google Home. The continued release of new technology that incorporates voice search gives long-tail queries an even greater presence in the search world.
Even when searches are done without the help of a virtual assistant, research shows that about half of users tend to search in more fully formed phrases and almost a third specifically use the question format. These people are doing so in an effort to find exactly what they’re looking for rather than receive a broad range of results. In order to have visibility in these searches it’s important that marketers include content that addresses their customers’ specific questions.
One easy way to achieve this is by including a FAQ page on your website. By researching and identifying the most commonly asked questions for your business and industry and addressing them directly, users will be able to see your content and find the information they are looking for more easily. Blog posts that take an in depth look at these topics are another useful way to add this content to your site.
If you’re using AdWords campaigns, you should also consider adding longer phrases to your keywords list. Broad match keywords may already account for some of these, but likely not all of them. Additionally, you may want to research and include common misspellings of your brand name due to frequent inaccuracies with voice search. It’s no secret that digital assistants sometimes have a hard time understanding exactly what users say, even with the newest technology.
With technology evolving all the time, it’s important for marketers to stay on top of the latest trends in searching and adapt their SEO strategies accordingly. Need help accomplishing this? Call us or fill out our
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