Voice Search Is Taking Over: Is Your Hotel Ready To Adapt?

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Posted on Nov 3rd 2017

One of the biggest shake ups in SEO in recent years has been the arrival of voice search. Thanks to mobile personal assistants and technologies such as Amazon Echo and Corona, consumers can quickly and conveniently find what they’re looking for online without having to touch the keyboard, and it’s a trend that’s expected to rise and rise. In fact, it’s expected that voice search will account for as much as 50% of all searches by 2020.

To ensure your hotel continues to find the widest possible audience, it’s important to start thinking now about how you can tweak your content to accommodate voice search enquiries. It’s a task that’s not as daunting as you might think. Just take a look at these 3 key areas to focus on below.

Consider Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are appearing more and more on the search results pages. This feature displays pockets of relevant content directly on the SERPs, giving users even quicker access to the information they’re looking for through Google. They can give you a head start over the competition by boosting your visibility on the search results pages and driving more organic traffic.

To identify featured snippets within your hotel’s content, use a tool like SEMrush. Keep in mind that in most cases, the snippets displayed are around 40-50 words. A good way to trigger them is to use conversational language and questions, while links, page speed and content quality all come into to play as with any other kind of SEO. Creating a FAQ page for your hotel’s website is a great way to take advantage of question based featured results.

Focus On Conversational Keywords

When your guests use voice search to plan their breaks online, they’re more likely to use longer queries or ask questions. For example, someone using traditional search might type in “riverside accommodation Brisbane”, whereas someone using voice search might say something like “what is the best riverside accommodation in Brisbane?”

That means it’s important to focus not only on the target keywords people search for, but strive to create content that is more conversational – this also helps boost the quality of the content as opposed to simply focusing on one or two keywords per page.

Don’t forget local search. Be sure to include keywords or local landmarks to your city to help Google recognise that the content is about a certain geographical location – a large portion of voice searches are made by people on the move and looking for directions.

Don’t Forget Schema Markup

Schema markup is another way Google strives to better understand webpage content and provide more relevant results for its users. Including schema markup for local businesses can get your hotel displayed in local results for general business information. You should also create a Google My Business listing to help your guests find you. Optimize your local citations on review and third party sites to make sure they are up to date and correct and contain links to your hotel’s social profiles.

With the rise in voice search, it’s more vital than ever to create quality content that is conversational, well structured and answers your guests’ questions. What are you doing to accommodate voice search enquiries? Let us know in the comments below!

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