How Do I Make My Website Voice Friendly To Attract Students
Voice search is the next big thing in online media space. Due to ease and convenience it is drastically becoming popular especially among millennials. Media pundits predict that by next year substantial search hits online will be voice based. On account of its abundant use, search engines such as Google are accentuating higher priority on voice enabled search optimization.
It will not be an exaggeration to say that voice search is the next big wave of the future. Due to enhanced user experience, it is going to be a massive hit. And that is precisely the reason why Colleges must take it seriously and explore ways to make their College or University website voice search friendly.
Now let’s see how we can do it.
Voice Search Defined
Let’s first define voice search. Voice search is a speech recognition technology that lets users say their search keywords instead of typing them into the search bar.
During its inception year, voice search technology had to struggle a lot. Also, people did not see the need for a hands-free search option. Picking up the right language was a great challenge for the machine. But with the gradual progression over time coupled with the development of smart phone technology, use of voice searches has increased and the younger generation is getting even better and better at it with passing of each day.
How do I make my website voice friendly – 3 Best SEO Practices that Will Help Make Your Website Voice-Search Friendly
“How do I make my website adaptable to voice search?” is the basic question of educational institutes today. And rightly so because now is the time to re-develop voice-activated content for your website.
A look at some statistics suggest that more than 70% of people who own smart speakers admit that the device has become part of their daily lives. Additionally, smart speaker users have also grown and is further rising.
Since voice is the future of web search, education marketers have to begin revamping their website to make it voice friendly.
Here are some of the useful ways of doing it.
1. Use Specific Phrases and Keywords
The way we talk is different than the way we type. Therefore, voice searches follow different algorithm than traditional text based search. Voice search focuses on long-tail phrases and keywords since it uses natural language processing. While speaking to smart digital assistants we follow a different approach than the one we use when entering text in search engines.
In voice search algorithm, long-tail keywords are ranked well than non-specific keyword or phrases. Long-tail phrases are basically specific multi-word phrases or keywords which are directly related to your product offering or service. It is common that while looking for a product or service user generally tends to search using relevant and highly specific words.
The spoken language is often conversational in nature which is different from the typed search language. The voice based query language is likely to be different than the one spoken to a digital assistant. Your website content therefore needs to focus on this important dynamics of the nature of voice based search.
2. Re-write Specific Sections of the Website in a Conversational Manner
Your website pages which are often visited through online searches should be conversational in nature to support maximum voice searches. Information related to frequently asked queries within the website must be written in a format using multi words or phrases that are based on natural language search patterns. Remember that more specific information on your webpages will lead to higher search volumes and will help in providing more accurate answer to the website visitor.
A query such as, “What are the best MBA Colleges in my location,” will throw back precise search results for users including your College name only when the website content is well equipped with specific information. This can be achieved by developing an entire set of questions with possible answers or may be by hosting a blog page that is created around long-tail keywords that are conversational in nature supporting voice searches.
You can ask your marketing team to prepare a list of possible questions your target audience most frequently poses to digital assistants and produce content around those queries. It would then also be a good idea to craft answers in the form blog posts.
Your website will be indexed properly in search results as long as your content is written in the most useful manner possible that digital assistants will notice.
3. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Friendly / Compatible to Support Voice Search
Smartphone usage among students is increasing day by day. It is their constant companion. It is therefore obvious that with increased access to internet through smartphones most of the search source will be voice based. Popular search engines have been encouraging businesses to pay attention to this growing trend and optimize their web content for mobile. Mobile and voice search will dominant search volumes in years to come.
Identify the stages at which a prospective student might need information about your courses. What information will help them to make an informed choice in your favour? Thereafter provide them with the desired information at each stage to make a decision.
More and more people are now using mobile devices and digital personal search assistants to get information quickly without typing. According to internet sources, quite a few searches on mobile devices are now voice searches and within few years’ time, half of all the searches will be done using voice commands. Voice search will become the most common search strategy among students in years to come.
Among the most popular means of interacting with voice search are personal virtual assistants like Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant These smart search devices are redefining SEO strategy of businesses all over the globe. In order to tap prospective audiences who use voice search, your University or College must make headway for making your website voice-search friendly.
4. Is Your Website Making Best Use of Semantic Search?
With the explosion of semantic search, long-tailed keywords and conversational phrases have become the primary search queries.
Semantic search is distinct from lexical search. In lexical search, the search engine looks for literal matches of the variants of the keywords searched. In this type of search, the overall meaning of the query is not considered while the search is on.
Semantic search on the other hand seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding the searcher’s intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace on the Web.
Semantic search tools are based on artificial intelligence that leverages advanced cognitive features to understand the human language to pull up meaningfully relevant information from the web source.
Websites that cater to semantic search queries are more likely to be indexed higher in search rankings than the ones that does not use this feature. AI enabled semantic search will ultimately improve the user experience of your website thereby providing real value to your target audience.
5. Write Content for Your Target Audience
Using relevant content on your website is the key to attract students through voice search and making your website voice friendly. An effective way to achieve this is by using structured data. This helps search engines to better understand your content and how it should be ranked and categorized.
Structured or markup language is embedded in your code that search engines can read to better understand your content. The markup language is used to highlight all related information from the content on your website when someone searches for a specific information online.
6. Setting the Right Tone of Voice for Your Website
Tone is basically a verbal expression of mood best adapted according to the audience.
The same information can be presented differently to different users by changing your voice tone. You do that not only through tone of voice but also through the words you choose and the way you structure them.
Your website content’s tone of voice will build your overall verbal personality. Your website tonality will be determined by two key questions – Who is your target audience? and What does your website want to achieve?
Both these points will help you develop and customize your website’s content according to voice search patterns. It will further guide you on the visual design of your website and let you make its content relevant and appealing to your target audience.
Ignoring the target audience and your stakeholder’s expectations will decrease search ranking of your website.
Use the vocabulary that is voice search friendly and appropriate to your end user. Watch out for inconsistency in information that might affect your search engine rankings.
Proofread your content periodically for effective optimization of content. Correct tone of your website content will strengthen brand loyalty and set your institute apart from the competitors.
Apart from the target audience, while making your website voice friendly do not forget to consider the type of interaction you intend them to have with your site. This aspect is important to identify the stages of interaction in order to optimize your web content for enhanced voice search. The efforts will yield consistent results in improving your website’s voice search.
Lastly
Leapfrogging into the New Age of Voice Search
The evolution of digital assistants / smart speakers has totally transformed the way online searches are being done. We can see a clear paradigm shift in search algorithms, based on this changing technology. Not just this, but growing usage of AI based applications is also bringing substantial shift in online navigation behaviour of consumers.
All this requires marketers in every industry segment to make tectonic shift in their digital marketing strategy especially in education sector since the greatest beneficiary of this trend are millennials. That is also the way to stay relevant and competitive.
Tell Us About Your Voice Plans
Hopefully, you have found this blog content useful. If you use these simple tips mentioned in the post, you will be able to create voice friendly content and attract more and more prospective students onto your website. You will also eventually learn how to develop relevant content that is voice search compliant and resonates well with smart search devices.
If you have any plans for incorporating voice search in your content marketing strategy, do write back to us today. We will be happy to draw a comprehensive plan of action for your Institute, and assist your marketing team in creating your own voice friendly content strategy.
Alternatively, you can also share any additional experience or tips that you might have for making a website content voice friendly to attract prospective students. Leave your comment here.
