OK Google: Find Poke near me!
Remember back
in the day when a cell phone was just a phone? Or even remember the joy
of doing a search with your fingers on your phone in Google for the
thing or service you are looking for? Now things have changed. Smart
phones are well… Getting smarter! Smart phones are so good now that they
are basically just like.. No it’s exactly like having a
personal computer in your hands! Super exciting right? Now things are
even better as there is a new better way to search then using your
fingers and hands and hoping you spell the item you are looking for
correctly. What is that you say?
YES it’s VOICE SEARCH!
Voice
search didn’t start as search it was just a way to ask Google Assistant
or Siri questions and see if they would answer them. Siri tell me a
joke. Or what is the distance from Honolulu to Waianae? Now it’s a full
featured way to find what service or product you are looking for.
The
easiest way to explain it is just click a button or say a certain
phrase and Google or Siri or Alexa will find it!. Techcrunch reports
that 1 in 6 people have a smart speaker in their homes like Amazon’s
Echo. Branded3 reports that 40% of all adults use at least one voice
search daily! I just did a voice search today looking for help with
getting my watch band fixed. I did a search on my Google Pixel and it
went something like this: Ok GOOGLE: Find a watch repair place near me?
Found one in Waikele and they didn’t even charge me for the fix! Now I
bet your next question is how does this help me and my business?
How Google and Bing work
In
the past you used to have to understand the keywords that Google my
have stored to find the correct item you are looking for. Try finding
Poke Bowls 5 years ago and it would think you were trying to poke
someone with a bowl! Now it’s getting much better and SUPER local!
Now
you can include normal long tail or long phrase keywords on your
website in hopes that someone will be doing a search for that particular
thing and or service and Google will recognize it.
Customer First
The
super cool thing is that voice search is just like having a
conversation. Content that is written not only for Google to find and be
relevant but also that makes sense for your clients. But with that in
mind make sure that your content matches your client not just Google.
Make sure that when talking about technical services that you are
speaking in plain English that someone that isn’t experienced will be
able to understand.
A few simple examples are what are your store hours and what kinds of services do you provide.
I
see this all the time. Someone calls me with a problem on their website
and they are not getting found on Google. The number one reason is that
they don’t have their website structured correctly. For example the
biggest text on your website page should be what the content of that
page is about.
Mobile Friendly
Now the
important part is making sure that when someone does do a voice search
that your website is mobile friendly or also known as mobile responsive.
That means that it’s easy to navigate your website on your mobile
device.
The next key is that your business name should be easy to
understand and even better if its super easy to spell. If you would like
to see if your website is mobile-friendly check out the Google mobile friendly tester. If you pass great! If not please see our page on Responsive Web Design.
Local Optimized Citation Website Review
With
local businesses voice search finds those businesses when someone asks a
question, so its very important to have all of your local directories
optimized which is the key to showing up in the Google map pack at the
top of a search listing. Don’t forget to think like any of your
customers and what questions the may ask. For example questions like
where is the best Korean BBQ restaurant near me will be asked, so the
voice search will act like its own search engine to find what they are
looking for. If you are a roofing contractor you may want to prioritize
doing SEO on insurance mitigation. Or if you are a poke stop you might
want to focus on Ahi Poke?
Another thing to keep in mind is review
sites like Yelp! and or Alexa. Now I know that some people are deathly
afraid of getting a bad review and I get it but having that listing on
either of those sites can be a game changer. For example if you are in a
very competitive market it may be easier to rank high on Google then
try and compete with the big boys on Google Search. Yelp is also a very
important citation website to consider.
Wow! Voice search is only
getting started and I estimate that by 2020 it will be the normal way
that people will be doing most of their searches. Making sure that your
website is first mobile ready and then also voice search compatible will
make all the difference to compete with your competitors in Honolulu
Hawaii and all of the outer islands.
If you are looking to see where you stack up on your local citation and or voice search please see our Local SEO Audit Tool.
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