Changing Trends Towards Voice Search

Very soon in the future keyboards and mice may become obsolete.

Voice search usage was 30% of devices in 2020, and grew nearly 10% in two years. We are currently at 40% of the United States population using voice search features! With voice search, you receive a single answer to your inquiry which is determined by Google’s algorithm in Google’s answer box.

How do you become that answer? 

What Is Google’s Answer Box?

Today I’m going to be talking about building educational content for your website. I am specifically going to be talking about building content that answers a question, or solves a problem, and appears on search engines such as Google, Bing, and others. 

The reason this is becoming so popular is with the added input of voice search, inquiries receive a single answer whether it be from Google or Alexa, as determined by the search engines and their algorithms. You may have seen examples of this as a snippet When browsing the web.

So the question is how do we become the answer to these questions. 

In order to understand this we have to understand what is the “answer box on Google.” The answer box on Google is the search engine result that lists what Google decides is the best answer to the question. It is placed below the search and above organic search results. It is important to note that not every single Google search is going to have these answer boxes because not every single Google search is a question. We also have to known that the wording used for answer boxes can be interchangeable almost having the same answer many times.

The design on the answer box is also different. We can notice that there’s an increase in the font size. There’s a border, and our text is placed above the blue hyperlink.

Those who are looking at searching with their voice will hear what is in the answer box read aloud. Anyone searching traditionally will see the answer as described above. This highlights the importance of the answer box as it is placed first over all other searches. This is very important because as anyone will tell you when you’re looking for a house or you’re looking for a new piece of property the most important thing is the location, the location, and the location. This is to say that the answer box is prime real estate when dealing with search engines.

You might be wondering what is the increase in CTR (Click through rate) for these Snippets versus non Snippets. In one example we saw that with a brand ranked 1st on google they would capture about 26% of the clicks on the search results. If the same brand had competing Snippets above and still ranked first they would receive 19.6% of the clicks and 8.6% would go to the featured snippet. When adding featured Snippets to their content as well as the position one we saw that they were able to capture 28.2% of the clicks. 

How Do We Become The Answer To Google’s Questions?

Keyword Research

There are many different software tools available right now on the marketplace that can help you search for keywords as well as target markets and audiences using Google Keyword Planner, sem Rush, etc. While these are very useful tools and discovering SEO to build into your website or embed onto your social media platforms. This type of SEO requires a  greater understanding of what your clients are looking for. And specifically we are talking about the questions.

So my recommendation would be to ask your customers, ask your colleagues. Understand what is unknown and what it is that people are trying to understand about your business so that you can get that information out there and then Google will put that in the forefront of their pages.

Another important item to consider is not just how the questions are being asked, but what questions are being asked, and in what language is the customer are asking these questions so that we can build a keyword list around these phrases.

Now that you have these phrases, take them and plug them into Google and start looking at all the different items that are appearing and the search results to reveal what is related to the content. This will allow you to further grow your keyword list.

Researching Your Competitor

Your competitors have either already started doing this or have not even figured it out.  Competitors that you see in your day-to-day business aren’t necessarily going to be the ones that you see in Google when you’re competing for rich snippets.

To begin the research process we need to take the key word list that we developed from the steps above and type that into the search bar. Make notes about the questions in the Snippets that appear and evaluate them based on what you can see.

How is the question formatting? Is it in a bulleted list, a paragraph, a table? What key words or phrases are being used and what is the length of the answer? Do they have a long sentence or just a single sentence?

Save these notes because once we go to the content planning phase will come back to this.

Content Creation

This stage is focused on developing an article and an answer to the query presented for example “what is SEO.” 

What we’re doing is trying to tie all of the content from our past research together so for example related searches. We take those related searches and we research them and we include content that might be all associated together to try to increase the SEO in one big batch. And many times we get information that we would have never thought of from the start without doing this process.

Many teams skip this step and move straight ahead to content planning phase, but we need to put more time and emphasis on the content creation to hit a larger audience and a wider array to spread this information. Ultimately spread our brand, our business, and our services.

Content Planning

Planning your content takes the information from the above steps to determine what we are going to create with finite detail.  Now that we have all of our different items we have a better understanding of if this is going to be a full blog, podcast, or a potential series. Also where we can place this and our content Management schedule that would be best for our customers.

We also need to go back to our competitor research and decide on whether we want to answer all of the questions in a single blog post. or would a more long-form content that’s broken up be a better alternative. It really depends on how the Snippets are being served on Google.

Content Optimization

Really Look at what your competitors are doing and what they’re not doing, and see what you can do to exploit that weakness or improve upon it within your own content.

Did they really answer the question or fail to cover related questions that another viewer might find important? Identify those related queries and see if you can determine if there’s a better answer.

One Of the most important things when implementing and developing our content is we need to use H2 headings in order to answer and be discovered by Google. Mimic the formats used and if Google likes the paragraph put in a paragraph. If Google enjoys a table put a table into your answer. It’s very simple but we have to look at different ways how we can gain a competitive edge and what it is that Google is seeking using it’s algorithm.

Technical SEO Optimization

Now I’m going to talk about the technical optimization that may require a bit of knowledge by a web developer or an IT professional.

Schema markup. This is the first structured data in HTML that gives Google an understanding of what the content is. There is data for everything from questions to articles you want to make sure that this data really truly describes what your content is.

Once we go ahead and mark up the schema we can then verify it on our website that is optimized and this happens when search engines crawl your website and they check for functionality as well as completeness and wholeness of information. You can view data like this using a number of services. My favorite is to go into the Google search console and look at the SEO and then review my crawls. A good paid version is Screaming Frog.

Mobile Optimization

This is a new feature which we saw implemented within the last year in which Google is now prioritizing the fact that we need multiple use websites whether it be on a phone, a desktop or a tablet. And this is most likely going to continue in the future so definitely optimize it now but if you rank poorly on these platforms you’re not going to be able to receive the search traffic that you’re looking for.

The Best way to optimize for this is to obviously build the best website that you can but a lot of times you can get away with using CDN such as Cloud for other services to host large bulky data and images  to reduce the loading speeds in which Google will read.

Another thing I want to mention as there’s also minification processes that you can do with your data but that is really advanced stuff for now. 

How Do I Know If My Content Was Successful?

The answer is tricky. Many people are concerned about SEO in terms of ranking better on Google and leading to a higher click through rate or more visitors to their site. However, with the new features on Google being added and continuously leaning more towards staying on the search engine platform. People aren’t necessarily going to click into your website anymore, or at least well see a decline of traffic from search engines. What is going to happen is you are going to gain domain Authority. This is the strength and the value of your website as it relates to others on the web. Those with higher domain authority have a greater recognition in the internet and have a greater superiority when it comes to getting their content out.

How does this work when we’re looking at voice systems like Alexa or Google. What happens is Alexa will give her answer and then cites the company. So you’re not getting a click, but the value is there and it’s added as an impression.

Are You Answering The Questions?

When I go on to Google I have two distinct mindsets and understandings of what’s going to happen. The first mindset is educational and informational where I’m going to receive an answer to my question. It’s very plain and simple. With this mindset I get the answer and I don’t get a click.

The second mindset is a marketing research oriented approach. There is no simple answer to my question, there’s only more information for the questioner to look at. And in this mindset I will get a click and I will get more content looked at. And there’s a possibility they might purchase a product or give me a review.

In both mindsets we can see that there’s a benefit to the brand for having its answer and its content in Google’s answer box. The recognition is there and the potential for clicks is also there. From my time and marketing experience, my understanding is that if you have the ability to do something you should do it, but do it well always.

What are some different ways that you’re getting your content into the answer box question please share your thoughts and opinions, or experiences in the comments below. If this post helped you, or if you enjoyed reading it please like it and share it! Courtesy of MAP Web Designs.

Need More Marketing Help?

If your business needs more Marketing help facing the challenges and changes of Google, check out our services at MAP Web Designs. We are the Best go to Marketing Team and SEO Professionals in Boise of Idaho. With industry leading experts in Web Design to SEO, we are the experts you need!

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