Why Voice and Local Search Are the Future

Voice Search

Think back about 100 years ago - the thought of speaking into a small computer and asking it questions or giving it demands as you would a human was an unthinkable product. It was an unthinkable way of life, to be honest. We are going to dive deep into how voice search is actively part of our everyday lives and provide a consumer lens to what important feature many find a bit creepy.

For those who are unsure, voice search is when a person speaks into a device, such as a phone, tablet, TV, smart computer, etc. and states commands or asks questions in which the device will then spit back out one answer to satisfy the question or need. For example, you might want to call your mom but you are driving and looking up her number on your phone while behind the wheel is very dangerous. So you ask Siri "Hey Siri, call Best Mama Ever" and she'll dial her phone number for you - no need to even touch your device. This sort of technology is evolving so rapidly that many researchers believe it is here to stay and we should all just get used to it. Do we really even have a choice? Our devices are listening to us and converting all of that information into providing the best results for our consumer wants and needs. It does this by translating our speech into text form and provides understandable and relevant information back to us. It's actually way more complicated than that, but you get the base knowledge.

Why is voice search important?

As consumers, we are constantly looking for easy alternatives to fulfilling our wants and needs. While voice search has been on the rise in popularity, it is important we understand why this has happened.

To begin, speaking takes way less time and effort than typing in our questions and commands to the internet. It all boils down to convenience - whatever is easiest, that's what most consumers will go with. Think of Amazon's Alexa. First of all, we humanize these voice search devices by giving them a name so it produces the best human results by speaking into them as they are actual living people.

As a firm, though, if you don't have a voice search feature enabled, it is likely you will fall quickly behind your competitors that do have voice search features. Notice that when you look something up via voice, there will only be 1 result? This is when a brand is position 0 in the SERP's and guess what - every firm is wanting to be that result. This shouldn't come as a surprise in our society, everyone wants to be the best, the go-to, THE result.

How can digital marketers optimize for voice search?

There are a few keys regarding how to be THE result since about 71% of people would rather use voice search over typed search.

1. Featured Snippets: The top Google response that is presented as a summary without having to click a link to read deeper - if you want to, you totally can though.
2. User Intent: Digging into why a consumer did what they did with the question or demand is an important step for optimizing your business for voice search.

1. Long Tail Keywords: When consumers use voice search, we speak into the device as we are talking to it - with normal phrases and generally longer speech.
2. Page Speed: A shorter time needed for a page to load is vital to the success of a voice search result.

If you want more tips on how to optimize for voice search, click HERE!

Local Search

Related to voice search, local search would be anything you do on the internet to help promote a physical business that operates in a face to face manner with their customers. An example of this would be looking up on Yelp the best ice cream near you. It uses geographic information through your device to provide the best results for your search needs.

Why is local search important?

As a business, your local search engine results will help weed out searchers who are likely not going to be customers of yours by using location to track if it makes sense for them to walk into your store. This will lead to a more efficient and accurate search for your actual customers. If this isn't convincing enough, here are some mind blowing stats that will (hopefully) persuade you:

• 1 in 3?searches on a smartphone was conducted just before arriving at a store.
• 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.

• 50 percent?of people who did a local search on their phone went to a physical store within one day.
• 60 percent?of American adults conduct searches for local services or product information on tablets and smartphones.

I could go on, but I think you get the point: local search is IMPORTANT!

How can digital marketers optimize for local search?

There are a lot of things businesses can do to optimize local search. Here are just a few worth noting:

1. Create a Google My Business account
2. Do your best to get good reviews - people listen to people
3. Optimize your business for voice search (refer above to refresh your memory)
4. Optimize your website for mobile use
5. Create content based on local news - this keeps users engaged with the world that surrounds them

Click HERE to review more ways digital marketers can optimize for local search!

As you can see, it is important firms get familiar with voice search and local search if they want their business to keep up with the ever-changing times of today and tomorrow considering this is the direction technology is headed.

Thank you for reading, I'll be in touch soon.

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