- Wanna know seven steps to get your business ready
for voice search?
We're talking about it here on The Journey.
Cut to the intro.
Hey everyone, I'm Nealey, that's Emma
and we're talking about seven ways
to really get you ready for voice search
with your business.
Voice is everywhere especially with the rise
of home devices and everyone talking.
So Emma, let's really go into why does this matter?
- Yeah, so by 2020 over 50% of all searches
will be voice searches.
I think that's really powerful.
- Absolutely.
- Also, 65% of people who have a Google Home,
I know I have one, or an Amazon Echo,
they say they can never go back to life without them.
- Right, it just makes life super convenient,
'cause you can go, "Hey Google, search this.", or,
"Hey Siri, search that.", and isn't it a lot faster, too?
- Yeah, I mean voice is faster than typing.
I know I'm guilty of it and I'm a pretty patient gal.
But when I wanna find something on the go
I'm gonna use voice versus sitting there
to type it in, it takes too much time.
Voice is like 3.7 times faster, so it's efficient.
- Yeah, ain't nobody got time for that.
- Ain't nobody got time for that.
- All right, so now, I'm gonna let you kick it off,
what is the first tip for us?
- Audit your current efforts, and think about this
with voice search, you know, what keywords
are relevant, what terms are being searched?
Very similar to SEO, what long-tailed keywords
are being searched?
It's really important before going into any other
steps is to audit the current efforts.
- All right, now step two is to really consider
position zero on search engines
for your small business.
Now position zero is basically the
questions and answers on search engines.
If you've ever gone to a search engine
and asked a question, it's right above
actual web pages, because Google knows
it's all about the user experience.
You're going on there to ask a question,
instead of having you link down a page
and another page, there just gonna give you the answer.
They're finding little clips from webpages already
and giving it right to you, so you can potentially
leverage that, answer questions on your website
and be found on that position zero
with those long-tail search results.
- Yeah, "Hey Google, how tall is the Eiffel Tower?"
- And you get that instantly instead of having
to dig through a page, try to find it,
it's just right there.
- All right, so this brings us to step three,
which is all about optimizing your near me searches.
Hey Siri, coffee near me.
- And what that's gonna do is Siri knows
where you are, it's gonna look up coffee shops
in the Kirkland-Seattle area and give it right to you.
You can do the same thing with your business.
If you serve a local audience you can say,
"Hey Siri, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah", and it'll
come up with your business.
- So think about it.
What are your customers searching in your area
and what keywords, more specifically, are they using
so you come up when they are doing a voice search?
- Right and you do those on your website.
You wanna make sure that the conversations
that people are having with their phone
is coming up on your website, so then Google says,
okay, cool, this is the information that they need,
I'll give it to them.
- And what a critical time, I mean, they're already
in the buying decision, right?
I'm not searching for coffee near me
just for the heck of it.
No, I'm ready for a cup of joe, and I'm ready
to spend my money, so you wanna come up
right now if you're in the Kirkland area.
- All right, now step number four
is really consider your online reputation.
Just like a poor reputation can impact
your search results, it can also
impact your voice search results.
Now on Google My Business, the bare minimum
you can be at is a four out of five star
if you want to maintain that.
Of course the closer you are to five, the better.
- And if you can't keep up with this,
'cause as we know, reputation management
is a full-time job, there are services out there
that can definitely reach out to outsource.
Just make sure that this stuff isn't just being ignored.
I know just from my experience at GoDaddy Social,
from managing Yelp and Google for local businesses,
we've seen a lot of great results for voice search
and search in general by just managing
that online presence there and neutralizing
the negative reviews, leveraging the positive reviews.
All right, that brings us to step number five.
Train your staff for the shift.
Make sure your account managers, everyone
that's onboard knows, hey, what is this about?
What is this trend?
What is voice search?
- And that goes doubly true for like freelancers
or other people you hire to help you with
your website and your business online.
Make sure that they're up to speed too.
All right, now step number six is
to get found using plain and simple language.
Now, when you're considering voice search
you really want to consider the way that people talk.
People don't talk super fancy like they do
when they write on their keyboards
or on their mobile phones, they talk a certain way.
If they're trying to find a coffee shop
they're gonna go, "Coffee shops in my area", right,
it's super simple and to the point.
- Very direct.
When it comes to the written word, yeah,
you're gonna see more flowery words and
terminology, but when it comes to the search,
simple, straight to the point.
All right, this leads us to our final step,
step number seven.
Keep your content relevant.
So, in other words, don't be general,
don't speak to a broader audience just 'cause
you think it's gonna bring in more business
or attract more people.
You actually can be a little exclusive with this.
Be tailored, be relevant.
- Yeah, you wanna be specific.
Like the old saying goes, you can't boil the ocean,
so be super specific about what you're creating.
All right, so those are our seven steps.
I hope this really inspired you to really consider
voice search for your business
and your marketing strategy.
If you like this video and you got a lot of
value at it, go ahead and smash that like button
and add a comment below on what your favorite tip was.
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This is The Journey.