SEO

5 tips to optimise your website for voice search

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Voice search

Voice search is one of the fastest-growing types of search. According to Perficient, 55% of users do voice searches on a smartphone, and 39.4% of U.S. Internet users use voice assistants at least once a month.

To stay competitive, it is vital for businesses to optimise for voice search.

Here are 5 SEO tactics for optimising your website for voice search

Audiences and devices

Before you make any actions, you will need to understand your audiences. This mean which smart technology they are using and how they are using it.

Understanding your audiences behaviours will ensure your website meets the voice-searching audience where they are, whether that’s on a smartphone, smart speaker, or even car speaker.

You can then create content that is compelling, as well as persona-based. Providing detailed answers to common questions and clear answers to simple questions will help you to appear in your audiences voice searches.

Conversational Keywords

In the age of voice search, even long-tail keywords won’t cut it. You have to use full phrases and questions that are normally used in conversations between real humans. Voice search requires you to use a more natural language as if you were speaking to another person.

Marketers need to create high-quality content that is written in a conversational tone.

Today, we use longer keyword phrases in voice searches. These phrases are known as conversational keywords. It’s important to note that conversational keywords can often change between generations and demographics.

Build FAQ

FAQs (frequently asked questions) are the perfect “question and answer” content and an excellent way of providing users with the information they need quickly.

Answering the “Who,” “What,” “Where,” “When,” “Why” and “How” questions is a great way to drive search voice traffic. Then answer them using conversational language to appeal to voice search.

Google Business Profile and local search

Google business profiles help your business. People use their voice to ask “near me” questions which make voice search SEO local-friendly.

It’s easy to create a Google business profile. You just need to create a listing, complete your profile with all the information you can provide, and wait for approval. Then when a person asks Google to display similar businesses in that area, your business could rank for that query.

Schema Markup

Schema is structured data markup that enables search engines to organise and understand a website’s content. A schema is a set of “types,” each associated with a set of properties. These types are arranged in a hierarchy.

Schemas can have a significant impact on search engine optimisation (SEO) and more specifically voice search as it helps devices such as Google Home, Alexa, and Siri to understand your content better.

SEO

3 steps to follow before you create your website

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- SEO

All websites don’t have the same purpose. Some websites are e-commerce platforms and allow companies to sell their products or services. Others are more branding focus and help entrepreneur and freelancer to present their CV and portfolio.

Your website’s purpose will influence the technology and the design used, but also the content and tone of voice.

Before you create your website you need to ask yourself some essential questions. These questions will lead you through these 3 essential steps you need to go through before you start building your website.

Are you selling products or services? Do you want customers to be able to make an appointment from your website? Do you want them to purchase items directly on your website? Where your visitor will be from and what is your expected visit volume?

The technology

The questions you just asked yourself will influence the technology you will be using. By technology, I mean the following

➡️ CMS or Content Management System

➡️ Payment technology

➡️ Web Hosting solution

➡️ Tracking system

➡️ Booking form or contact form

Once you have listed the technology and requirement of your website, you can check the market and find the best solution for your business and budget.

If you’re an entrepreneur or a very small business, I advise you to choose an all-in-one solution like Shopify or Wix. They have packages of every type of website, hosting, and excellent Customer Service. They also have affordable prices which are important when you start your activity. They also integrate with payment and booking systems.

Many CMS propose their own tracking system, however, I will advise you to install Google analytics on your website from the get-go. Google Analytics is free and one of the best tracking solution on the market.

The content

It’s still too early to build your website 🙂

Now you need to define your content – what you will be talking about – and the website architecture – how the content will be displayed and how you will prioritise the information.

Let’s start with what you will be talking about.

Keyword research

Obviously you! You will be talking about your company and your products and services. But in reality, it is not that obvious. The way you are talking about your services for example might not be the way your customers perceive it. this is why keyword research is crucial.

The keyword research will help you to define all the search terms used by your target to find your products and services. You can then rank these keywords by relevance and search volume. Keep in mind that usually the more volume you have the more competition you will also have on these keywords.

For your keyword research, you can use Google Keywords Planner or Moz Explorer.

Website Architecture

Now you have your keywords, you can create your pages list and your website architecture. When you define your website architecture, you need to have 2 important pieces of information in mind:

Your keywords search: How you will talk about your product or services? Which words you will use in your content and in your titles, URLs, page titles, and meta descriptions.

Your messaging: What are the most important messages you want to show to your customer? You have to make sure your activity and product are well understood. The important content or information will be displayed on the most important pages such as the homepage and other pages placed in the menu.

The navigation: How people will navigate your website? Are your conversion CTA visible? Is it easy to find your navigation bar? is it easy to find valuable information? If a visitor struggles to find what it’s looking for, it will leave your website without converting. The navigation bar needs to be easily found. Most importantly, CTA leading to conversion need to be visible and accessible.

Wireframe

At this stage, you know what you will be talking about, and which pages you will have on your website.

Wireframes are maps of your pages. The wireframes will help you to define how the content will be displayed and what your page structure will look like. When you are building your wireframe, you can prioritise your content, define spacing and add important functionality you will need in place. This is why it is important to keep your potential user’s behaviour in mind when you build your wireframe.

Your visual identity

Here we are, one step before you start your website construction. But what an important part. Your visual identity is the combination of all your visual elements:

Logo: Your logo is a symbol (sometimes a name) that represents your business. It needs to be unique, and recognisable by your target. If you cannot afford a graphic designer, there are many logo makers apps that can meet your expectation.

Typography: These are the fonts you will be using on your website. For SEO and aesthetic purpose, you should only use 2 fonts.

Colors: These are the colors you will use on your website and other brand assets (business card, social media assets…). Before your choose your colors, make sure you read about color psychology and how they impact customer behavior. There is also a cultural or industry aspect to take into consideration. You can have 1 to 2 primary colors and 2 to 3 secondary colors.

Imagery: What type of visuals you will add to your website? IS photography more adapted to your activities or illustration. Your choice. But make sure you keep it consistent on your website and other marketing assets.

SEO

5 common SEO mistakes

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- SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a long-term strategy. It requires continuous actions to arrive at and stay on the first page of the search engine.

While you are putting so much effort into your SEO, avoiding some common mistakes will have a positive impact on your strategy.

Here’s the list of the most common SEO mistakes.

Forgetting about HTTPS migration

“HTTP” stands for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol” and the “S” stands for “Secure”. An HTTPS website uses an SSL certificate to secure the user journey. HTTPS is one of the most important ranking factors and the deadline is already due. Indeed, Google announced all sites will have to migrate to HTTPS before 28 June 2018. But don’t worry, it’s never too late. However, the more you wait for more your SEO strategy and your rank will be affected. Here’s the best guide to migrating your website. I used it for my website. It was easy and quick.

Do not wait. HTTPS is not only important for your site ranking but also for conversion rate. HTTPS is an indication the visitor’s data are safe. For example, an e-commerce website will see fewer purchases if the site is not secured. Nobody will leave his card and personal details on a website that is not secured.

Write for SEO purpose

One of the first SEO actions is Keyword research. During this research, you will look for and rank the keywords describing your business activity. These keywords are search terms used by potential customers during their research on search engines.
For example, if you selling cosmetics online, you will need to have keywords such as “cosmetics” “beauty” or “skin treatment” in your list.
You will rank these keywords based on criteria such as relevance, monthly search volume, and competition.

Producing and optimizing content according to this list is part of your SEO actions. These actions will help you to improve your position on search engines and rank your website during your prospects’ searches.

While you creating new content you have to keep one thing in mind some questions:

Who will read your content?
Most businesses have several targets. These targets do not have the same challenges and goals. Consequently, they look for different information. You need to produce content for each target.

At which stage of the buyer’s journey the visitors are?
Depending on their stage, the buyer will need different types of information. At the awareness stage, the buyer needs information related to its problems. At the consideration stage, the buyer needs information related to solutions that can solve its problems. Finally, at the decision stage, the buyer needs information related to your products and how they can solve their problems.
There are many types of content: Blog articles, Whitepapers, Case studies, or Videos. All types are not suitable for each step of buyers’ journey.
Which questions are you answering?
Good content is answering a question that your potential customer has. If you have a solar panel business, your customer questions can be: How can I reduce my electricity bill? How can we use solar energy to reduce electricity bills?
By providing them an answer, a solution you will increase your conversion rate.

Forget about Meta Title and Meta Description

Content optimization is crucial and some snippets are more important than others.

Meta title: this is your page title displayed in search engine results and on your page’s tab. It briefly describes the page’s content. The Meta Title must contain less than 60 characters. You will need to insert the keywords relative to the page to improve your position on these specific searches.

Meta description: this snippet describe your page’s content. The meta description is also shown in the search engine. It should contain between 50 and 160 characters. You will also need to insert the keywords relative to the page to improve your position on these specific searches.

These snippets have a double interest. There are important ranking factors and they describe your page to help search engine users to visit your site.

Forget images optimization

Optimised your website’s images will have a double advantage. It will improve your website’s speed, and boost your ranking.
You can realise simple actions to optimise your images.

Reduce size: Your image size will have an impact on website speed. If you compress and resize your images you will improve Page Speed and consequently the user experience.

Image Alt Attribute: it’s the description of your image for search engines. That will help your image and website to be ranked for the keywords used.

Duplicate content

Duplicate content impacts negatively your position on search engines. Therefore you need to avoid it and tend to use original content. However, if you are still using duplicate content, you need to indicate your preferred URL to Google. You will need to add rel=”canonical” link element, you indicate which page is the preferred or original content.

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