Voice and Local Search Optimization

Your business could be invisible on the internet to half of your customer base. You might be thinking that is impossible because your company has a website so why wouldn't people be able to find us? Well, if voice search and local search are absent in your digital marketing plan then you are missing out on a major chunk of your customer base. In this blog, I will be covering what Voice search and local search are, why they are important, and how to optimize for them as a digital marketer.

Voice search

The average human begins speaking at the age of two and starts to read around the age of five. This makes it so even young children can navigate through a voice user interface. This applies to adults as well, the average person can speak three times the speed than they can write. Voice search allows users to search topics by speaking to the smart device or virtual assistant and having it input the search query, rather than having users type it themselves. Conclusively, voice search "makes it much easier for us to spend money with our mouths than with our fingers."

"Voice commerce is expected to reach $80 billion by 2023, and businesses that update their digital platforms to support voice search can look forward to a 30% increase in sales by 2021."

Why is it important?

When it comes to marketing you should always be looking at how you can meet your customer's demands. As voice search is growing more people are using it... what does that mean for your company? Well if you do not give voice search your immediate attention, your company may become invisible to anyone that uses it. To put this into perspective "40% of the adults now use mobile voice search at least once daily" and "55% of teenagers are using voice search on a daily basis." These are all potential customers that will not see your online presence due to the lack of investment in a voice user interface.

How can digital marketers optimize for voice search?

1. Create a psychographic voice profile: "Consumers using voice today tend to be young (18-29 years old), iPhone users, and male (by 69%)." You have to look at your brand to build a psychographic voice profile. Some important questions to ask while doing this are Where does voice fit into the behaviors of your brand's target audience? When and how does your ideal buyer use voice? How can voice influence the customer's decision-making journey?
2. Map out brand-friendly devices: You must find out what type of devices your customers are going to use when searching for your products. For example "for restaurants that master geo-enabled "near me" marketing, cars become an ideal voice device. However, a brand of running shoes may be more interested in the VUI of earbuds or other wearable tech, such as smartwatches."
3. Play voice assistant matchmaker: The most popular voice assistants are Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and Cortana. Consumers use each of these assistants for different tasks. This makes it important for you to "play matchmaker between brands and voice assistants to ensure their products are found."
4. Seduce algorithms through SEO: When someone uses a voice search it tends to narrow the search results down to a single result. "Brands must modify their SEO to include the exact questions consumers use in voice search, often in the form of FAQs, to increase the odds of reaching them through voice."

Local search

"Restaurants near me"

Local search is activity on the web to promote a physical business that makes face-to-face contact with its customers. A unique set of techniques and skills can be used to increase the businesse's visibility on the internet. This is also known as "local SEO". 

The following graphic gives an overview of the core tasks that make up a local SEO campaign, from bottom (fundamental) to top (advanced).

Local SEO is all about gaining a competitive edge over your competitors in your local area. You use the foundational elements in the pyramid above to gain that competitive edge.

Why it is important?

Here are some stats from a blog on SEJ titled What Is Local SEO & Why Local Search Is Important

• 50 percent of people who did a local search on their phone went to a physical store within one day.
• 50 percent of searchers on their mobile phones who conduct local searches are looking for things like a local business address.
• 78 percent of local-based searches on a mobile device end in purchases being made offline.
• 71 percent of people who have been surveyed have said they search for the location of a business in order to confirm its existence before going there for a first-time visit.

When you see all of these stats it is impossible to ignore the fact that consumers are using local search. When someone is conducting a local search there is always an underlying reason for why they are doing it. If your business is not available on a local search there is a big chance that you are missing out on potential customers that are in your area.

How can digital marketers optimize for local search?

One of the most important things a business can do to optimize for local search is to conduct NAP consistently. NAP stands for your business’s name, address, and phone number. Some SEO experts also add a W at the end of NAP to make NAPW. The W stands for Website. The key to conduct NAP consistently is to make sure that no matter the platform your business is using make sure that it always uses the same name, address, and phone number. If you have different information on different platforms it will just confuse your customers and take away from your businesse's credibility. You also do not have to stop at just NAP, you should include as much information about your business as possible. Other things to include are your hours and a picture of your menu if you have one.

Conclusion

Is your business doing all it can to be visible to everyone on the internet?