In January, Google made significant improvements in its natural spoken search algorithms, giving visitors to your area even more relevant search results from their mobile devices with simple voice commands…hands-free.

Increasingly, spoken search from mobile devices is being highly used for travel tourism, particularly when the consumer is nearby or already in your area. These changes can help your visitors and consumers more easily locate your hotels, restaurants, shopping and tourism opportunities, if you prepare your website and optimize your content.

Think Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, Cortana
These use natural language processing (NLP) technology to deliver search responses to the where, what and how questions visitors are asking…”where is the closest hotel to your shopping district…what attractions are nearby…how do I get to my destination?”

Optimize for spoken mobile search
Think about how a visitor might ask their mobile device for information about your area? For example, they may say, “what hotels are near the concert venue?” or “where are hotels on the Bourbon Trail?”

The use of long-tail keywords in your answers not only serves to direct potential visitors to your hotels and attractions, but when used in your pay-per-click campaign they can also be a more cost-effective use of your advertising dollars because they are less competitive than the most popular short keywords and phrases and more targeted.

Include FAQ’s in the way you expect visitors to query. If you have not yet done so, include a FAQ section and keep it updated with questions asked in a way that you expect your visitors to ask. What do visitors want to know about your area? What are the attractions or historic interests, and where can they expect to find the hotels, restaurants and shopping venues and parking facilities while they are present? And Google likes “how to” answers for events and attractions.

Include “near me” queries into your FAQ’s. Navigational queries remain one of the most frequently utilized voice searches and can help to attract visitors planning trips from outside your area. Be sure to word your FAQs about what attractions are nearby in the conversational manner that a visitor might ask. This improves the semantics of the search as well as the directness of the search response. Visitors might ask how close you are to a major city or attraction, or they may be searching for hotels in your area that are more readily available, at a lower rate.

Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)
These are the criteria Google considers to be indicative of page quality – so make sure you frequently reference your CVB as the official provider of information for your area.The idea is to optimize your website with keyword rich, intent based content and to update it regularly in order to entice Google to index your site frequently.

Schema Structured Data
On the technical side, ask your Webmaster to update your site by integrating the Schema Structured Data. Google has recently added a Schema markup for FAQs to make it easier for Google to find this content on your website.

Recap
The takeaway is to keep in mind that visitors are already using voice activated search in their daily lives and may be looking for an experience relevant to your area or may already be in your area, so it is important for you to help them find you in the quickest and easiest way by simply asking. “Hey Google…”