“Where is the nearest ATM?” “How do I get to the Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA?” – Welcome to the world of voice search. Highly intent-driven, highly local, and very important to just about any consumer business. comScore estimates that by 2020 more than 50% of search will be powered by voice. How do you prepare? What features do you need to have in your Content Management System (CMS) to prepare you for the future of search? These are some of the answers we are exploring in today’s blog post.
Today’s consumers tend to engage in one of three types of searches: informational, navigational, and transactional. 82% of mobile searches are informational, with users searching for information about your business or products. In these situations, it’s critical to ensure that consumers can easily find your business information across different channels including social media outlets, local listings sites such as business directories and review channels like Trip Advisor or Yelp.
Optimizing a website for voice search comes down to five core components:
1. Your CMS needs to make your website usable for mobile users.
If your site doesn’t load quickly or looks dated on mobile, people will bounce. To achieve the best results with mobile you need some core components:
- The fastest possible page speed to keep users engaged.
- A mobile-first design for an interactive, app-like experience that looks & behaves like “native” apps.
- AMP technology: Accelerated mobile pages (AMP) deliver relevant content on the web in the fastest way possible. When AMP pages are delivered through CDN; (Content delivery network) a geographically distributed network of servers and data centers, it benefits end users through faster content delivery and better performance.
- Progressive Web App (PWA) technology to provide notifications and off-line access for exceptional mobile experiences.
- The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 mandates that electronic and information technology must be accessible to people with disabilities. Catering to those with disabilities is not just a mandate of the law, it’s the right thing to do and it makes good business sense.
2. Your CMS needs to make it easy to optimize your content for voice search:
This means having the ability to create different type of content formats, such as: media rich pages and FAQ microsites.
- The most Common type of queries are “questions.” By answering frequently asked questions (FAQs) about your business directly in your content, you give voice-users the ability to get to your site while fulfilling their needs.
- FAQ’s help to address user needs and serve as pages which create local authority for the business – showing up better in search results.
- Lastly, there has been a huge spike in How To (reach), Where To (visit), When To (events) type of search content niches, businesses are leveraging this opportunity by creating content & solutions which cater to these micro moments and in return create value for the business.
3. You need a CMS that understands your web content and voice search queries.
Structured data (Schema) is a form of HTML that gets embedded into your websites to help search engines discover the content and understand what it’s about.
- Your CMS should make adding “schema tags” simple and fast. Embedding Schema on different types of content is what feeds the search queries and contextualizes the results for better end user experience.
- Schema enabled web pages push your most relevant content to the user, which in turn drives conversions. For example, product schemas wrapped on accommodation pages help promote room sales for hotels or event schemas wrapped around events helps to promote events to their audience. Equally, a retailer’s store pages with schemas help promote stores to nearby consumers.
- Many people use image search to find relevant content. Schemas help to optimize image search by wrapping images with search-friendly tags that make it easier for consumers to find your visual content.
- The CMS should make it easy to add meta tags including Title Tags, H1s, H2s etc. but it should also make it simple to add Image Alt tags and social tags such as Facebook OpenGraph tags, etc.
4. To Boost Voice queries you need consistent data across the CMS and the Local Ecosystem.
Your content gets a performance boost when your CMS is linked with a local listing Platform.
- This connection and sync make your UNAP (URL, Name, Address, Phone) stronger. Changes made to your UNAP inside the CMS should be easily translated to your local search management platform.
- Consistency of information across directories, local listings, data aggregators or map systems always allows your information to reach the users correctly.
5. Make life easier with robust technical features inside your CMS.
Features such as: automated audits, architecture & SEO, automate generation of sitemap XML allows for better collaboration and upkeep of websites as new features are introduced to increase voice search capabilities.
Your website and mobile presence are the most powerful channels for driving direct leads and traffic to your retail or hospitality business. Selecting the right content management system (CMS) for your website or the website of a revenue-driving outlet such as a restaurant, golf course, or spa is one of the cornerstones for a business seeking to establish a world-class digital marketing presence. The platform upon which you build your website and mobile presence has a huge impact on your customers’ user experience and on your presence in search engine results – and hence your digital return on investment.
Want to see if your website has “enough” schemas? Test it out yourself for free. Just follow this link to use Google’s schema testing tool. If you have just a basic “business type” schema – or worse yet, no schema at all…. It may be time to call in the cavalry…. For more information about Milestone CMS, contact Milestone at +1-408-200-2211 or send us an email at [email protected]
