For example:
Where is the nearest Subway near me?
What grocery stores are open nearby?
Where is the closest pharmacy?
You’ll want to review the enterprise’s Google and other local listings.
Listings should always include the company’s operating hours, short blurbs, and photos.
Complete listings make it easier for searchers to reach out to your business or visit it in person.
Terms may include “near me” phrases, or they can be specific, such as [car manufacturers in Detroit].
One tip crucial to an enterprise’s success when optimizing for local is to account for regional or area slang.
Your research teams should understand local slang and dialects that may be used in a search.
For example, [where can I get the best soda in Boston] will change to [where can I get the best pop in Ohio] due to regional slang.
Internal teams should help you create these distinctions before moving into new markets to help content creation and search engine optimization teams maximize local voice search potential.
In the last few years, voice assistants have nearly doubled. From your iPhone and Android to Alexa and other platforms, assistants are everywhere.
Personal preferences are taken into consideration, as well as your location across all three types of searches:
Discovery: Find a plumber in Atlanta, Georgia.
Direct: Call Bill’s 24/7 Plumbing and Septic.
Knowledge: Why is my water turning brown in Atlanta?
Conversational phrasing must be considered across all enterprise offices to help capture as much local search traffic as possible.
Enterprises must do more for voice searches than just claim and optimize their listings on Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Yelp, and other local directories.
You need to focus on long-tail keywords, refine your keyword research even further, and try to add context to your content.
Master Schema Markup To Add Content Context
Leveraging schema is crucial to help search engines make sense of an enterprise’s site content. Review and incorporate schema markup guidelines to help boost voice search.
A few tips that can help you master schema are:
Start using Google’s Speakable Schema (beta) for sections of your text that are best for Google Assistant and voice search.
Use analytics to help understand keywords and phrases customers are using.
Find speakable snippets in new and old content to add schema.
Think of your content in a conversational way to enhance context.
Schema markup, when used properly, can help add context to the content on each site and allow for greater voice search potential.
Speakable Schema lets you fine-tune your control over how voice assistants highlight your content. For example:
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org/”,
“@type”: “WebPage”,
“name”: “Ludwig’s homepage”,
“Speakable”:
{
“@type”: “SpeakableSpecification”,
“cssSelector”: [“intro”, “summary”]
},
“url”: “http://www.example.com”
}
Using JSON, you can add the speakable structured data to make your intro and summary speakable. You can adjust this for any cssSelector you like.
Enterprises are also finding greater success with voice when adding structured data for:
Product information.
Pricing.
Availability.
As an enterprise, a bump of 1% to 2% traffic from search can add significant revenue to your bottom line. Schema.org has examples of how to use schema for ecommerce using microdata, RFDa, structure, and JSON-LD.
Add FAQ Sections Into Key Pages
Remember how you need to add questions to your keyword research?
It can be challenging to find ways to add questions to pages without interrupting the natural flow of your content.
How can you overcome this? Frequently asked questions.
FAQs can add immense value to your pages and help you start improving your voice search optimization.
One way to begin incorporating this is to:
Perform a full content audit on the site(s).
Identify pages and blogs where you can answer questions.
Start adding FAQs to the most important pages and pages with the most potential.
Since you’re optimizing for voice search, answering questions in conversational tones is crucial.
Begin The Transition To Conversational Language
Content creators have heard about tone and consistency for decades.
“Speak the customer’s language” is often repeated across industries.
However, when dealing with voice search, a shift toward a conversational tone is emerging.
As it turns out, the stuffy “business tone” isn’t how most people use their Google Assistant or Amazon Echo.
You’ll need to ensure content teams are on board with these changes.
A quick meeting to reinforce conversational tones and maybe an update to briefs sent to writers can help drastically.
An excellent way to adjust content to be conversational is to have:
Editors review all content.
Read content aloud.
Small changes, and if you can add in spoken words and slang, can make a world of difference when trying to create more conversational content.
While there will always be traditional typed searches, enterprises and marketers should focus on the possibilities that voice search has to offer.
More Resources:
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