Your Content To Get Found in the Conversational Search

1. YOUR CONTENT
TO GET FOUND IN
THE
CONVERSATIONAL
SEARCH
@ N U P U R A N D W O R L D
W W W . N U P U R A N D W O R L D . C O M

2. What is conversational search?
Conversational search refers to the
use of complete sentences and other
natural-sounding phrases and verbal
units in search queries and how those
queries are interpreted by search
engines using artificial intelligence
algorithms.
Historically, most internet searches
were based on keyword phrases, such
as “Thai food” or “long-haired dog
breeds.” However, conversational
searches use grammatical and
syntactical patterns that closely
resemble the way people talk. The
result is a search experience that’s
more organic and appealing to the
average searcher.

3. Research related to the
conversational search phenomena
indicates consumers are much
more likely to engage with fluid,
interactive digital experiences than
rigid, antiquated ones. Reports like
these underscore the need to place
conversational search
considerations at the center of the
content planning process.
Keep in mind: “Organic” doesn’t
mean open-ended. Traditional
keyword searches tend to unleash
torrents of undifferentiated results,
many of which have no relation to
one another aside from the
inclusion of a given keyword.

4. Most searchers find these results tedious
and difficult to wade through, often
resorting to random clicking to get to the
information they’re seeking. In the worst-
case scenario, they may abandon their
search altogether, drastically decreasing
their chances of encountering content that
may serve them.
By comparison, conversational searches
return refined and targeted results. In
recent years, the explosion of
conversational searches is largely
attributable to the growing popularity of
digital voice assistants like Siri, Alexis, and
Google Assistant. Its use is predicted to
continue climbing as more users come to
rely on intuitive text and voice searches.
The popularity of these AI-driven devices
isn’t surprising, considering they went
mainstream with Siri’s release in 2011. But
satisfaction rates now are as high as 80%,
according to GetVoIP, with many
customers citing their ease of use and
reliability in comparison to other devices.

5. Put simply: Conversational search
represents a distillation of the things
modern consumers value most:
convenience, accessibility, and a high
degree of personalization in online activity.
How does conversational search impact
content creation?
Optimizing for search once was as simple
as sprinkling in discrete keywords to
increase the odds of the content popping
up higher in search engine results. The
more times the keywords appeared, the
more “relevant” the piece was deemed for
searches containing those keywords, and
the more likely it was to claim a position in
the coveted SERP top slots.
Adding conversational search to the
picture makes things a bit more
complicated.

6. For content to rise to the top of search
results pages today, it must satisfy
searchers’ informational demands
immediately and minimize the probability
that they’ll venture elsewhere for answers.
This is easier said than done.
Double-digit search result pages are
chock-full of well-intentioned posts that try
and fail to be useful to internet users. To
avoid suffering the same fate as those
underachievers, you must avoid the traps
they fell into.

7. Your own product/service support
literature - It’s rare that a product is sold
that isn’t accompanies by a user manual
compiled by the manufacturer, distributor,
dealer, or integrator. While most people
don’t like reading manuals because they’re
boring and overly discursive, they’re often
goldmines for the kind of granular
information likely to be used in a query
using conversational keywords.
Where to find conversational queries about
what you do or sell
Sometimes, keyword research tools can reveal
them, or queries recorded through Google
Search Console, making their discovery easy.
But sometimes you have to dig deeper - in
fact, you might have to dig into offline
repositories to come up with a truly
comprehensive list of words and phrases.
Here are some good sources for discovering
your own unique set of words and phrases
you can craft content around. In many cases,
you won’t have to hunt far to find them.

8. Focus group transcripts - Do you have
access to a focus group, or other research
study, in which customers have been
interviewed about how they use, view, or
otherwise regard your product or service?
Being able to study the real language used
by “real people” can often provide
powerful clues about how people will
search for your products/services online.
Your ad campaigns and marketing
collateral - You may have paid your ad
agency many thousands of dollars to come
up with a killer campaign. And while it’s
unlikely that you can repurpose any ad
copy directly, the marketing research used
to back up the campaign may provide rich
fodder for conversational keywords and
phrases.

9. Social media and internet forums - The
internet has always been a place for
people to solve technical issues - often in
real time - about an astounding range of
products and services. Some are “official”
places maintained by product developers
(e.g. Microsoft, Adobe, etc.), many other
more informal places exist whose main
function is interactive service and support.
These too can be rich repositories of
specific words and phrases pertaining to
products/services you supply. Make sure
you check out Quora, as well as any
specialized industry groups on Facebook,
LinkedIn, or other social network, and
mine these areas for language likely to be
used by searchers.
Your own customer support - Do you have
access to the logs kept by your customer
support/helpdesk team? Because your
own people may be “in the front lines”
dealing with customers every day, they’ll
be an excellent position to know about the
precise words and phrases used in
complaint/service calls. In many instances,
this language may be very close to that
used by searchers interested in your
products/services.