Businesses like the Barilla Group are looking to advance their Voice Search Engine Optimisation (VSEO) strategy. Why? Because consumers are using it.
Improvements in voice search accuracy and a growing number of voice-enabled touchpoints on Alexa, Siri, and other assistants, make VSEO a must-have tool in every marketing arsenal.
In fact, our VCI 2022 shows that 1 in 3 people across the US, UK, and Germany ask their phones questions about products, businesses and services daily. So, if you want to be where consumers are, you need to start optimising for voice.
BUT FIRST… WHAT IS VSEO?
Much like its well-known cousin, SEO, VSEO is a way to direct traffic to websites organically and improve brand visibility through content optimisation and keywords. However, it focuses on conversational, natural language – essentially, the way people speak on a day-to-day basis.
Instead of typing a question in, users activate their voice assistant and ask for the information they’re interested in. This means people choose longer phrases or questions, called long-tail keywords.
The way they get their results is also slightly different. Instead of a full page of answers, they only get one result, called “position zero” in voice. This is the equivalent of a featured snippet in traditional SEO.
However, the Microsoft-ChatGPT integration is already changing Internet search as we know it. We can also expect Google to keep improving its own AI search model, Bard, which will eventually become a search engine built-in feature just like ChatGPT is in Bing. This means traditional and voice SEO will look very similar in the future, making optimisation so much more important.
“As these engines go from being generators to being deeply connected to search, your brand, business and personal website content will become ever more entwined with generative media.” – James Poulter, CEO and Co-founder at Vixen Labs
HOW TO START USING VSEO NOW
It all starts with… optimisation! The goal is to make your content the preferred response to customers’ voice questions. And that means – keep it conversational.
Think about what your brand is known for. The opportunity is to become the know-how for your products, industry, and all things that fall under your expertise when people ask questions.
What does your brand stand for? How can you be helpful when answering your consumers’ questions? Write about that in a way that is conversational and natural.
Answering the right questions can lead to less pressure on customer service teams, and more support for your sales department.
But first, research, research and… research! You have to know your consumers’ needs, aims, behaviours, pain points, and wishes. Most of the time, they will be the same as those you identified in your traditional SEO analysis. However, they will show up differently in voice – think about how people ask questions verbally, and then how they type. Yes, long-tail keywords will be your best friend, starting with the research stage.
Another great thing about VSEO is that you don’t have to stop at answering questions – you can prompt users to continue their enquiries. Don’t just provide the bare basic with facts, take the user on a journey. If they want information about a product’s ingredients, the likelihood is they will also want to know more about where they can shop it from and how much that product costs.
Lastly, use SEO to grow your VSEO strategy. If your keywords, backlinks, title tags, and meta descriptions are already in a good place, you can easily start optimising for voice. And if not, now is the time to do it, so you can grow both practices at the same time.
HOW VIXEN LABS CAN HELP
At Vixen, we specialise in all things voice. While the playbook for creating a VSEO strategy is far longer than covered here, you’ve discovered the main ways to build a great VSEO strategy.
Keen to get started? We can accelerate the process with targeted research and strategy development, so drop us a line and we’ll book a chat.
