Now is the Right Time to Optimize Your Content for Voice Search

Back in 2011, when Siri first came out, it was considered a novel and cool technology. It was informative and rather funny at its core. Everyone loved playing with it. However, at no stage was it considered a major impactful technology. Or atleast, that is how we perceived its present (now past) and future.

Things have changed and turned out to be different.

Today, Siri, or more specifically, voice assistant technology has become ingrained in the fabric of our daily lives. We have been introduced to its various other forms: Alexa, Cortana and Google Assistant.People are using voice assistants to perform almost all their routine tasks– from setting up reminders to making calls to taking important notes.

But one application that truly stands out is voice-assisted search.

Voice search queries have become a major trend. They are dominating all platforms: tablets, smartphones, laptops and computers.

According to Bessemer Venture Partners, 20% of all mobile search queries are made through voice assistants.

Google also acknowledges this.

Speaking at Google I/O conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that one-fifth of the queries on Google are made through voice search. The high number of voice-first devices in circulation are a further evidence to established (and increasing) prominence and popularity of voice search.

Why is the technology so prominent and popular? The reason is simple: Because of its convenience. Typing a search query takes time. Not to mention, there’s always the chance of a misspelling.

Performing a voice search on the other hand is more convenient.

You don’t have to type; you only have to speak through the microphone and the technology does the rest for you with amazing accuracy.

Plus, it’s faster than typing.

This begs the question: Is your content optimized for voice search?

It’s all about creating a relevant acontent strategy

To produce voice search optimized content, you need a relevant strategy. This strategy will be a part of your overall content marketing strategy.

The steps to creating a content strategy that produces voice search optimized content are as follows:

  • Identify the common questions consumers are most likely to ask
  • Highlight which of those questions are more interesting to your business
  • Come up with a set of closely related questions
  • Address the targeted questions in a single cohesive article

Identifying market-specific questions shouldn’t be a problem for you if you already leverage content marketing for your business. Where you may struggle, however, is short listing questions that are more interesting to your business. When shortlisting target questions for producing voice search optimized content, focus on ones that capture micro moments.

What are micro moments?

Micro moments are defined as windows of opportunities where a customer is ready to try, commit or buy. What makes micro moments so significant here is the fact that voice searches are more definitive in terms of action than traditional searches.

Think about it: When was the last time you voice searched something like “Funny videos” or “Top tips to so and so” or something similar?

Usually, when customers perform a voice search, they’re doing it because they’re in a hurry. Their intentions are more refined and defined.  They are more prepared to spend money on a product or service. Their queries often start along the lines of I-want-to-know, I-want-to-do, I-want-to-go and I-want-to-buy nature. They are usually at more advanced stages in the marketing and sales funnels. They exhibit a greater tendency for micro moments and these are the very moments you need to target.

But how can one capture these critical moments through their content, you ask?

That’s where keywords come in.

When we are talking about using keywords for producing voice-search optimized content, the focus should be on long tail keywords.

Remember, voice search queries are very specific and detailed. You won’t find the generic ‘buy jackets’ queries with voice-assisted queries. Instead, they’re more likely to use something like ’buy black leather jacket’.

This inherent nature of voice search queries makes the use of long tail keywords imperative.

Also, it’s vital to optimize the use of keywords according to the search intent of consumer.

After the Hummingbird update, Google has started placing strong emphasis on user intent when interpreting search queries. It prefers returning content that employs keywords in the context of the search intent of the user.

This applies even more strongly to voice search.

For example, consider the keyword “digital marketing”.

It can have different contextual meanings depending onthe nature of a search query:

  • What is digital marketing?
  • What are the business benefits of digital marketing?
  • How does digital marketing work?
  • How to hire a digital marketing company?
  • Where to find a digital marketing company in Alabama?

Assuming that your “What is Digital Marketing” article will rank high for a search query “how to hire a digital marketing company” just because your article contains the keyword, is a big mistake.

You need to make sure your content serves specific user needs.

Voice search has undoubtedly come a long way in a very small period. However, the technology is still evolving, and the algorithms powering it are only getting better. As such, we can expect newer and more effective content optimization strategies to be introduced in the future.

Do you run a business that has online presence?

Do you need help with optimizing your digital content for voice search?

Search Berg is at your service!

We’re one of the leading content marketing firms in the United States. Employing an experienced and knowledgeable team of content marketers, we can optimize your small business website and make it more effective at helping you achieve your business goals.

Get in touch with us today.

Mobile SEO Checklist for Website Owners That Understand SEO

Okay, so mobile-first indexing is finally (and officially) here—but on a larger scale.

Phew Google! You really ran it late this time around.

And we’re grateful you are informing us about particular migrations through the Search Console.

Which brings us to you (no, not you Google; you there, reading this post) and your website.

Is your website ready for mobile-first indexing?

What is mobile first indexing, and why bother?

Traditionally, Google used the desktop version of your website for indexing; your mobile website (www.m.domain.com) was more or less treated as an “alternative” version of it.

In some cases, Google would not even make the effort to crawl and index your mobile website as it considered the practice redundant. And who could fault it, for desktop searches ruled at that time and the volume of mobile search queries was low.

Then, it all changed!

Mobile devices became more popular and outgrew desktop search queries. Internet users were no longer being directed to desktop websites; instead, mobile websites became their new homes. At least, for a majority of them.

This forced Google into a rethink. Since the desktop version of a website can be very different to when it’s pulled on a mobile device, the search experience of internet users was getting compromised.

Google had to come up with a solution.

And it did by introducing mobile-first indexing.

This update treats the mobile version of a website as its primary version.

Crawling, indexing, extracting snippets are all primarily done using the mobile version of websites.

Even the rankings for web pages depend on what Google finds while indexing the mobile website.

That’s not to say the desktop version of a website has lost its importance.

Remember: it’s mobile-first indexing and not mobile-only indexing.

For websites that deliver mobile-optimized experience to users by employing responsive design strategy, this update will have minimal to no impact on their indexing results.

However, if your website uses dynamic serving or a separate mobile URLto deliver mobile-optimized experiences, the pending changes can adversely impact its ranking and consequently your business.

What should you do in that case?

We’ll recommend reviewing the mobile SEO details of your website, and get the issues fixed immediately before the update affects you.

What type of SEO details, you ask?

Mobile SEO checklist for mobile-first indexing update

Start with a review of on-page SEO details.

  • Are the meta titles and descriptions optimized for mobile search?
  • Do your webpages have strong headlines?
  • Do mobile and desktop versions of your website have the same content?

Next, ensure the data on your mobile website is properly structured and follows the same markup that’s present on the desktop version of your website. Any deviations or absence of structure altogether can cause your website to lose visibility on SERPs and suffer in terms of click-through rate.

Does your website have alternate versions of content for different languages and countries?

If yes, and you use hreflang tags for content differentiation, then you’ll definitely want to check if your mobile website has hreflang references updated.

Google strongly advises doing so. Also, make sure the content on your mobile website is paginated.

What is pagination?

Pagination is basically the practice of dividing long-form content into discrete pages.

The desktop version of your website is likely to have the content already paginated. However, pagination may not exist for your mobile website. This can lead to un-indexing of the non-paginated content.

While we’re at the subject of indexing, it’s also worth reviewing the internal link structure of your mobile website.

Quite often, mobile websites show fewer links on a webpage to optimize their users’ online experience. Since internal links help Google crawl your website more deeply, fewer links could affect the indexing and crawling process for your website.

How to ensure a uniform internal link structure between the desktop and mobile versions of your website?

We recommend using a crawling tool(such as Sitebulb or DeepCrawl) to perform the check.

Also, evaluate where those links are placed on your website and reposition them (where needed) to make them more visible and clickable.

Lastly, you would want to review some details of your site’s technical configuration that can impact its ranking. These include:

  • Optimizing the redirects
  • Checking and increasing the speed of your mobile website

Mobile-first indexing changes are a matter of when, not if. Sooner or later, Google will target your website for migration. It’s better to act now and save yourself from unnecessary inconvenience.

Need help with optimizing your website for mobile-first indexing?

Search Berg is at your service!

We’re one of the leading SEO service providers in the United States. Our expert and experienced SEOs can optimize your website for all Google updates, making it more effective at helping you achieve your business goals.

Get in touch with us today!

Don’t Destroy Your Website SEO By Making These Redesign Mistakes

There are more than 200 million live websites in the world and seemingly as many web design mistakes that are committed—knowingly or unknowingly—by designers on a regular basis.

If you want to remain competitive, it’s important to keep up with technological changes, trends, and updates to user experience conventions.  Unfortunately, this essential task presents certain high-stake risks as far as SEO is concerned.

This blog will discuss some common web redesign mistakes which can potentially destroy website SEO.

Changing The Name Of An Image On A Web Page That’s Ranking High

While doing this isn’t always a problem, when companies change the name of an image from a web page that’s ranking well, it can backfire. Arbitrarily assigning a new name to an image may lead to pretty substantial drops in search engine ranking.

Inexperienced web designers are usually guilty of committing this mistake. We’ve observed more than one instance where the wrong web designer has negatively impacted the SEO of a client’s web page.

Sometimes web designers who have little know-how of SEO are hired to redesign a website which was already doing well in terms of ranking. They redesign aspects of the website which didn’t need to be altered.

Since they lack the experience, they replace existing images with larger ones. The worst is when they use names for these images that offer no SEO value. This takes away the context, a crucial element that search engines use to determine the ranking of a particular web page.

Not Redirecting To Pages After Changing Their URLs

It’s possible to no longer have use for certain web pages after a redesign. It’s the mark of an expert web designer to change the URL of web pages that are renamed and/or moved.

It’s a big mistake to simply delete these web pages as they might have high rankings. There’s also a high chance that these pages could’ve been bookmarked by customers or may contain inbound links pointing to the web pages.

Pages that are deleted and have inbound links may lose the SEO value generated from those links. Under some conditions, drastic loss of current ranking may occur—something you definitely don’t want.

Unfortunately, this is a multi-faceted problem. For example, potential customers who click on those links can be directed to a 404 page.

This creates a frustrating user experience and is not the kind of thing that should be greeting your visitors.

  • The Right Way To Delete or Move Web Pages

If you want to delete a page, the proper way to go about it is by redirecting traffic to a currently existing, relevant page. As far as moving pages is concerned, it usually involves changing the URL of that page. In this case, it’s important to redirect traffic to the new URL.

A 301 redirect can be used in both scenarios. It indicates to the search engines that the previous page has been permanently relocated. In the case of most web hosting service providers, this can be accomplished by using the correct entry in your .htaccess file.

Sometimes the .htaccess file isn’t visible on your server. Simply adjust your FTP program settings so that you can view hidden files. Keep in mind that your hosting platforms might be using a different method, so verify if you can go this route with their support team.

Making the Development Environment Index able

Designers have their own way of handling the development environment. The majority include a subfolder in their domain. Others create a domain for the sole purpose of web development.

Search engines index content and follow links that they find. This can sometimes create a problem. For example, it’s possible for a search engine to index two different versions of the same website. This can cause issues with the content and the links.

Not Performing a Website Crawl Post Migration

It doesn’t matter which method you use to migrate your website, there’s always a chance that errors will occur. The typical course of action is to migrate a live website to the development area.

This is then followed by making the changes you desire and testing them. Finally, designers send the live website back to the live server.

A common mistake we’ve noticed designers commit is that they frequently send content-bound links directing traffic to the wrong place. This usually happens after they migrate the completed website back to the live server.

The content posts and pages still have links directing to the development environment pages, images, CSS file, or JavaScript.

  • The Solution

Download the crawler Screaming Frog on your desktop to gather comprehensive information about your website. It can also be downloaded on the cloud-based tool, SEMrush. The free version of the software can crawl 500 URLs.

The software can be used to crawl your small business website much like how Google’s spider bots function. It can be used to crawl text links, links to JavaScript, image, and CSS files which might be hidden in the website’s HTML.

The URL tab can be used to review your web page’s URLs. The software studies the URL structure and optimizes it as needed.

It makes it easier for Google to index web pages with a URL structure containing keywords and lower-case letters which accurately describe the web page content.

Note that as it’s free, it might have certain limitations like less-than-100%-accurate results.

Neglecting To Reconfigure WordPress Post Migration

It’s very important to allow search engines to crawl and index your development environment after the designers migrate a website to the live server. Failing to do so could cause the website to be dropped completely from Google’s index.

Given the magnitude of the impact of such mistakes, designers should immediately check the configuration of any plugins like WordPress, which might affect how search engines assess your website.

Conclusion

None of the above-mentioned mistakes are particularly difficult to avoid. All you need to do is to hire expert web designers like those from Search Berg. A salient feature of any website is a fully functional web design which your target audience can easily access from a number of devices.

Our web design and development services guarantee responsive web designs for all platforms. Our team specializes in top CMS platforms including Shopify, WordPress, BigCommerce, and more.

The web design and development mix we provide includes landing page optimization, web copywriting & SEO optimization, E-Commerce solutions, custom CMS customization, and more.

Get in touch with us today.

How the Latest Google Update Impacted Local Businesses

Contents

Local SEO Basics: What Is Local SEO?

Businesses in the Healthcare Industry Faced Losses in Organic Traffic

Keyword Rankings Increased

Changes in Organic Results

Backlinks Weren’t Affected

Increased Gap Between Local and Organic Algorithms

Parting Thoughts

If your local business website was affected by the recent core algorithm Google update, you weren’t the only one. Those who primarily work in the small business market should be particularly vigilant of how the update changed the dynamics of local search.

Continue reading “How the Latest Google Update Impacted Local Businesses”