You must be really confused about what NLP is and why we are saying that it is impacting the SEO! So, let’s start from the basics. According to Techfunnel, NLP stands for Natural Language Processing, which uses Machine Learning. It is not just keyword-focused and is originated from search queries we write or speak naturally.
How NLP Works With Voice Search
Alexa, Google home, voice search from your mobile or desktop, voice controls on your car steering, etc are all using natural language processing (NLP) to understand what your query is and break it down to machine understandable language. Let’s look at the steps in which NLP works:
1. Syntax Analysis
Initial steps for understanding user query is to analyse syntax and understand its context, as many users type in very long queries in their natural language. NLP is smart enough to break it into contextual phrases and search best-related results. NLP also understands grammar and helps to get through keyword stuffing done by many websites. This helps to reduce the impact of black hat SEO to a great extent.
2. Content Categorisation
NLP is that smart that it can self-categorise content you are posting on your website even if you have or not defined a particular category on your website or blog. This helps search engines to give the exact category results users must be searching for in context to some of their past queries and search trends. NLP also tracks down which images and other entities are present on your website such as videos, gif, whether it’s a car, laptop or mobile, etc. So, this affects the SEO as correct alt tags are to be placed talking exactly about what is shown in an image on a webpage.
3. Multiple Language Support
Now as your business goes global, language factor comes in. Your website may appear for search result queries in other languages as well but with NLP, it will only come in top results if it has content specific to that particular region’s local language which is most commonly used for the web such as Arabic in Dubai and Spanish in Spain. Google now understands your website language better and serves the queries accordingly. So, don’t be surprised if you start seeing a decline in traffic from countries that don’t have the same primary language as your website. You can always create the same web page with the same content and translate it into other languages and pass canonical to the main language website.
How to Rank Your Keywords With the Help of NLP and Voice Search
Every day the number of people using voice search is increasing at a very fast pace with easy to use technology and best results without having to type the whole query. This also saves a lot of time. As voice search users increase, it is more important than ever to write for users and not for bots as with the help of NLP, Google picks up best results that match user query and answers are directly either spoken or displayed with the help of speakable schema.
With NLP at work, you feel like you are always talking to a human and not a robot. It helps the device to quickly process your query and in no time give you the best answers and sometimes even ask a question back to give you further answers.
To rank your target keywords with NLP, do not force your keywords in content and write as simply and contextually as you can. The simpler the language, the easier it is to rank for the keywords used, which will, in turn, increase the user engagement on the website.
How to Improve Keyword Ranking for Voice Search and Your Website’s Overall SEO
Are you ready to get your web page in search voice search results on various mobile devices?? Here are the 3 key points you need to keep in mind for creating more scope to beat the tough competition for voice search results.
No. #1 Be mobile ready
Your website needs to be fully responsive and structured. Also, your blogs or articles need to be AMP for best speed as it matters a lot in voice search results. If your site doesn’t exhibit well on mobile phones, then voice search will hardly be of any use.
No. #2 Have The Right Structure
Your webpages need to have a schema structure defined to let crawlers know how your page is working. For that, you can take help of some of the crucial schema tags such as language, publisher, author, speakable and more. While writing an article, write in key points or as listicles more often as these have higher chances to be picked up by Google.
No. #3 Work With A Q&A Format
You must write in a way where questions are asked and you are providing answers to those questions. You can use the tool ATP (answer the public) as mentioned in the previous blog. Find out the most common questions readers ask related to a particular topic and try to answer in small point with the exact information that solves the query without distracting them with unnecessary information.
Below are some #Keyfacts for #VoiceSearch from #Backlinko that are supremely helpful.
Quick Refresher
The growth in voice searches as the preferred medium for today’s consumers has been outstanding and industry reports support that. In the world of personalised marketing, as Google understand humans more, marketing strategies will take a shift towards hyper-personalised marketing strategies and we are ready for that. In the meantime, follow the above tips and ace NLP and Google voice search to optimise your SEO efforts.
