Voice search optimization basics
Voice search optimization is the latest trend in search. Users simply speak into their smart speaker device, ask a question, and the device spits out an answer. It’s extremely convenient for users, but it requires a little bit of work from the optimization side to ensure that businesses earn the voice result for their products and services.
Essentially, the crux of voice search optimization is ensuring that you optimize your pages to target keywords in the format that voice searchers search for them.
For example, in a regular search engine query, you may search “pizza Harrisburg,” but in a voice search query, you may ask, “where can I get pizza?”
These slight differences mean that you have to shift your SEO campaign just a bit in order to target voice-search-geared keywords. But don’t worry, in doing so you won’t take any value from your original SEO keywords.
Voice search continues to grow, which means it’s crucial for your business to optimize for voice search queries. Otherwise, you could miss out on valuable business — especially if your competition is optimizing for voice search and you’re not!
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What does a voice search optimization agency do?
A voice search optimization agency is your go-to resource when you want to ensure that your content ranks high enough to be a contender for voice search responses.
Not only can they help to optimize existing content on your website, but they can also help you create new content based on new targeted keywords.
After they’ve improved, added to, and created new content for your website, they’ll help you analyze the results of your campaign. This is extremely beneficial, since without analyzing your results, you won’t know whether or not your campaign is heading in the right direction.
Analytics allow you to determine what parts of your strategy you need to change and improve so that you can ultimately end up with a successful voice search optimization campaign.
One of the best things a voice search optimization agency can do for your company is increase revenue over time.
The process of ranking your content high enough to be considered for a voice search result creates a domino effect — the agency improves your website, the website starts to rank highly for key terms, your website becomes a voice search result, more people visit your website, more people buy your products, and overtime, your revenue increases.
When you work with a voice search optimization agency instead of taking on the campaign on your own, you can count on seeing the domino effects — and more.
Some of our client Successes
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“We measure our success by how much we WOW our clients.”
Bill Craig WebFX President
Should I hire a voice search optimization agency?
Though the concept of voice search optimization isn’t overly complicated, if you don’t have someone on your team that understands all the terminology and processes, it can be a hard campaign to accomplish on your own.
It’s a good idea to consider hiring a voice search optimization agency to take care of your campaign for you — simply because it’s their job. They’re trained and well-versed in everything voice search and can provide a successful and beneficial campaign for your company.
If you’re thinking about carrying out a voice search optimization campaign on your own, consider these few things first.
Who on your team will carry out the campaign?
If you want someone on your team to start a voice search optimization campaign for your company, it’s important to thoughtfully think through your options.
Do you have someone on your team that’s already an expert at SEO? Does your marketing director have an idea of what a voice search optimization campaign entails?
If you have someone that stands out for the role, you may be in luck. But if nobody on your team has any knowledge about a voice search optimization campaign, you’ll either want to train them or opt to hire an agency.
Do you have the budget to train and maintain a voice search optimization campaign?
Let’s say nobody on your team is knowledgeable in marketing, SEO, or voice search optimization. That means you’ll have to pay to have them trained and purchase tools to help them with the campaign.
Online classes can be expensive and the tools necessary for the job can be even more pricey.
The difference between paying to train one of your own employees and simply hiring a voice search optimization agency is this — when you hire an agency, you’re likely guaranteed results. When you pay to train someone on your own team, nothing is guaranteed since they’re still no expert.
Do they have time to learn about voice search optimization?
So you’ve decided that you want to spend the money and train someone on your team for voice search optimization. The next thing to consider is whether or not the employee has the time in their schedule.
If you want them to continue doing their current job at your company on top of learning how to do voice search optimization, you’ll have to consider whether or not they have time in their schedule to train and implement a strategy.
The employee you choose for the job may have so much work to do during the day, that they have to train for their new responsibility in their personal time. This is far from ideal.
Let’s say that the employee has just enough time in a day to finish their current job at your company and learn how to do voice search optimization. Even so, remember that voice search optimization is an ongoing process.
They won’t simply work on the campaign for a week and be finished. Voice search optimization is an ongoing initiative and if an employee doesn’t have a lot of free time, hiring a voice search optimization agency is a better option.
Can you afford to let their current responsibilities slide?
Voice search optimization isn’t a “set-it-and-forget-it” kind of campaign. In order for it to work properly, you have to actively nurture your website.
That beings said, whoever you entrust to handle your voice search optimization campaign will likely have to let some of their current responsibilities slide. There’s a huge possibility that they won’t be able to handle both their current job and a voice search optimization campaign, which means you should consider whether or not its okay for them to step back from their current responsibilities.
If that’s not an option, your best bet is to hire a voice search optimization agency.
How to choose the best voice search optimization agency
If you’ve decided that it’s best to hire a voice search optimization agency, here are a few tips to help you choose the best agency for you.
Choose an agency that fits your budget
Budget is one of the most important things to keep in mind when you run a business. A budget exists for a reason and if you exceed it, you could find your business in financial trouble.
That’s why it’s important to make a list of all the agencies that you’re interested in, along with how much they charge for the services you’re looking for.
If they don’t fall within your budget, take them off your list — there are plenty of voice search optimization agencies out there that will fit your budget!
However, be sure to do your research before setting your budget to ensure that you’re in the right ballpark in terms of how much campaigns typically cost.
Choose an agency that has great reviews and testimonials
Reviews are comments that past clients make on behalf of an agency’s services. Reviews can be good or bad, which can be extremely telling of how an agency performs.
You’ll want to choose an agency that has far more great reviews than bad ones. Keep in mind that no agency will have 100 percent perfect reviews, but the best agencies will have far more positive reviews than negative ones.
Testimonials are given by past clients that were extremely satisfied with the work of a specific agency.
You can typically find testimonials on an agency’s website and the best agencies will have hundreds of them.
Choose an agency that wants to help you meet your goals
Before hiring an agency, you should always talk with them in depth about your campaign. If the agency seems uninterested in meeting your goals, or makes you feel like your goals are unreachable, it’s probably best to go with a different agency.
On the other hand, it’s important to know what kind of goals are realistic. If you want to see a 100 percent website traffic spike in one month with a voice search optimization campaign, an agency isn’t wrong to tell you that you likely won’t meet that goal.
Qualities of the best voice search optimization agencies
After you’ve shortlisted a number of voice search optimization agencies, it’s time to find the perfect one. To do so, consider some of the qualities found in the best voice search optimization agencies.
They have great client retention rate
If you’re researching voice search optimization agencies, you’ll want to find out how long the agency has been around and whether or not they’ve had a high number of clients in the past that have stuck around.
A voice search optimization agency that’s just starting out likely won’t have the experience or expertise to guarantee you results on your campaign. If they haven’t been around long enough to serve a wide variety of clients in a wide variety of industries, its not guaranteed that they’ll provide the best results possible.
Retention rate refers to what percentage of clients stay with an agency – so its important that this number is high for the voice search agency you’re looking to work with.
At WebFX, our retention rate is 91 percent!
They’re transparent and show pricing on their website
When agencies provide pricing on their website, it means that they aren’t trying to hide anything about their campaigns. They’re comfortable providing pricing up front so that nobody’s time is wasted.
They want you to know up-front how much their services cost so that you can know whether or not they’re within your budget, and if you should take the time to contact them.
These kinds of agencies are less likely to have hidden fees because they lay their pricing out for you.
They contact you after you fill out a contact form
There’s nothing more annoying than not getting a response after you fill out a contact form on a website. The best voice search optimization agencies will take your contact forms seriously and reply to you within a reasonable time frame.
If you don’t hear back from an agency for weeks on end, it’s time to keep looking. This is a sign of less than impressive communication.
They have more great reviews than bad ones
Like we mentioned before, reviews are extremely important to determining their quality as an agency. Though reviews have the potential to be positive or negative, the best agencies will always have more great reviews than bad ones.
However, don’t let a few bad reviews scare you off. Everyone perceives services differently, and when you read a review, you don’t get both sides of the story.
It’s an even better sign if the agency took the time to respond to the review on a public forum, so that you can see that they’re responsive and willing to make things right with their dissatisfied clients.
Looking for the best voice search optimization agency?
If all these qualities sound too good to be true for a voice search optimization agency, you don’t have to look far. WebFX is one of the best voice search optimization agencies in the game, and we would love to help you reach your business goals with a voice search campaign.
WebFX is a full-service digital marketing agency, which means we don’t just provide voice search services. We also provide services like SEO, PPC, social media marketing, email marketing, and so much more.
We’ve driven over $1 billion in sales for our clients and we have departments for each of our specialties, so you know you’re always getting ands-on, specialized attention with your campaigns. Combined, our team has a staggering 1.6 million hours of expertise — so you’ll never have to worry about the efficiency of your campaign.
We have over 200 digital marketing masters on staff who are experts in their respective fields. They stay up-to-date with the latest in digital marketing trends, so your campaigns are always ready to take on your competitors with the latest and greatest in digital marketing strategies.
We’ll get to know your business, your industry, and your competitors before implementing the perfect voice search optimization campaign so that you have the best opportunity for growth and success. We want you to succeed, so your goals are our goals.
You’ll get the analytics behind the success of your campaign and your single point of contact is always just a phone call away.
If these qualities sound like a voice search optimization agency that you can get on board with, we’d love to hear from you!
You can feel free to contact us online with our contact form, or give us a call at 888-601-5359.
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