How to Adjust an SEO Strategy for AEO

“Hey Siri, find me the best hotel in Vienna”, “OK, Google. Cheapest ticket to LA”. Today, over 42% of the UK population use voice search on a daily basis. This does not indicate how lazy we have become, but how much improved these services have evolved and how we now accept this type of information when we need it. Along with this evolution, this has given marketer’s new challenges to merit users attention in a new way.
We have tried to include any information you may have missed in answer engine optimization for improving your SEO strategy.

Voice Search Trend

Google with Google Assistant, Apple with Siri, Amazon with Alexa, Microsoft with Cortana, Samsung with Bixby, and Yandex with Alice at lightning speed response has changed users’ behaviors. Today, 55% of teenagers and 20% of adults use voice search regularly.
Reasons for this are simple: 32.6% of users consider this approach as an easier way, and 25.7% as a faster way to find something online, 26.2% use voice search when they are unable to type or look at the phone, and 15% – just for fun.

According to the research, 19.9% of respondents from the US answered that when they needed to look up information they used voice search. This means only one thing – we need to adjust our SEO strategy for AEO in 2018.

Main Tips

SEO is more about tactics, while AEO is about strategy. If SEO is oriented to organic optimization for specific keywords phrases and content on a desktop or mobile device, AEO focuses on optimizing the website for particular queries and answer engines. Moreover, voice search is also typically mobile and often locally focused.
The main goal of answer engine optimization is to make Google or other engine’ bots find and read out all necessary information on your website immediately. Let’s consider the main factors that differ AEO from SEO:

Keywords Length

Usually, voice search queries are longer then typed. This is the main difference we should pay attention to when building new content. There are various tools which will help you find potential users’ questions. Here are just a few of them:

1. Rank Tracker
Here, in the Common Questions research, you can enter keywords relevant to your business, and the system will suggest ideas for possible questions.

2. Serpstat

This tool also lets you research niche questions based on your keywords. Any questions provided can be grouped by various parameters or exported to a CV file.

3. Quora
This is a worldwide question-and-answer service, which certainly will help you find the questions in your niche by topics and specific keywords. Moreover, here you can filter results by time frame and popularity.

To achieve your goal you can also use social media networks, or simply within ask boxes on search platforms.

Featured Snippet

Mobile users like to see featured snippets – this is content which appears above all search results found. The higher these are ranked, the more likely they read only your message and click through the link and on to your website.

This information can be in three main formats: paragraphs (40-50 words summary), tables, and lists (steps or something similar). To make your content snippable, you should:
1. Start with the most newsworthy information to answer that question(s)
2. Transit to important details and add image, GIF or video
3. Wrap up with examples

To re-crawl your pages quickly after any changes you may have made, use Google Search Console.

Structured Data Markup

Use Schema.org “universal language” to help Google take necessary data from your website without having to rely on heavy crawling and parsing all the content. This doesn’t replace HTML coding but works in conjunction with it. There are three major types of schema.org markup: microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD. Please, read this article to learn more.

Semantic HTML5

HTML5 semantic elements divide up a page into sections, giving each part a specific role. This helps Google and Bing know which section to pay attention to when choosing information for search queries.

Brand Authority

Another key factor for AEO is your credibility. This means search engines notice websites with high ratings and quality feedback from users first. To improve visibility, your website should also be mentioned on credible for Google sources (for example, WikiData), and have at least 5 reviews on Google.

NAP

Correct Name, Address and Phone number must be included in the mobile version of your website. These can help search engines find your store during a local search – when users end their question with “near me”. Try to ensure you have a Google Maps location in case you have a physical store or showroom.

Last Words

Today, we use voice to switch on the lights, turn on a TV and search necessary information twice as fast than ever before. This saves us time and it seems that the use of voice search will have been grown by 30% by the end of 2020.

This is a factor why today you should adjust our SEO strategy for AEO, so to appear on pages 1 and 2 in the search results. To make Google and other search engines understand your content, we should:

• Improve keywords based on potential users’ questions
• Take care of featured snippets
• Use structured data markups
• Implement HTML5 for dividing website pages into sections
• Improve your brand confirmation and brand authority