The Sunday Talk – Voice Search Is Here To Stay

Hi, guys. it’s Monday 27 of March and I am on my way to work.
Nice weather so I am thinking: Every time people want to start something new they will do it on a Monday.
So this week I want you to start thinking about Voice Search and the effect it may have on your SEO/Digital Marketing in the future.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, read this article by the amazing Purna Virji called “The Step-By-Step Guide to Testing Voice Search Via PPC“.

Have a great week, guys. Love you. Peace.

Alexa, I am going to the shop. What’s on my shopping list?

Alexa: You have five items on your shopping list.
Cheese. Dark Chocolate. Black olives. Whiskey. Wine.

Busted. The whiskey is for my neighbour. He loves whiskey.

Yes, Martin. I am so happy you are asking about Voice Search because your business is a prime target. Yes, a prime target of Voice Search.
I will give you some tips. Do you mind if I record them for my Sunday Talk? Don’t worry – I’m not gonna mention your company.
So let me give you some tips.

The first thing you should think about is:

1. Your website should be mobile friendly and follows all Google mobile SEO best practices. All of them.
2. The second thing structured data. Yes, Purna Virji mentioned it in the video. You’ve seen the video. Good. Structured data is very important so Google can really understand your website.
   You have to implement structured data. If you don’t know I will give you some tips.
3. And then when it comes to content keep in mind the conversational nature of voice searches. People don’t just say ‘Bus’.
   They say ‘Alexa, when is the next bus coming?’ or ‘Where is the nearest bus stop?’
   Develop questions that searchers may ask and make sure you have content that answers those questions. This includes adding Q&A content to your site.
4. And then something very important. Optimise local sources as mobile voice searches often involve “near me” questions.
   You do it all the time (Asking “near me” questions).

Purna: Anyway, you can call Omi. Omi is one of the best technical SEO’s in the whole world, and I can truly vouch for that. So yeah, talk to Omi for any technical SEO questions. Make sure your citations are diverse if you have.

The third step is to go and do some keyword research, now I know the sort of intent people are coming from.

Omi: Can I just stop you here for a second? Because for the second time, you’ve mentioned citations. Are they really that important?

Purna: They are that important because people tend to just go and look and they may not even click through save all the information that people are seeing is on your citation and they don’t have a chance to go to your website to find the address, and then yes it going to be really important. Make sure your address is fine, the phone number is correct, hours are correct.

I’ll give you an example. It was Easter weekend, my mum and I wanted to go shopping, and we said okay is any store open? So I did a search for a large retailer here and I asked is he open? And he said yes open until 9 am to 9 pm so I’m like fabulous. We went. It was closed. It was so frustrating when I went out, I was like “I’m not going to this stupid store again”. I was so annoyed. And so we looked up another store.Yes, Easter hours, we are only open till 5 but we are open today. So that was good. That was helpful.

Reviews are also really important, especially If you are local. Make sure that reviews are what people see first and they may not click anymore to give you more chance to explain.
The first impression is all that is going to matter. So yes even if you are not a local business, sometimes citations just seem, just your reviews online are important.

The third one is: think about the intent and look at only a couple of different places. We’ve seen examples of companies that we’ve consulted with and who’ve started optimising for voice and the results that they’ve seen are lift in traffic and then engagements when they’ve optimised.

So the question is always where do I start? And it’s not that difficult. It’s like prioritise from your top 2 or 3 most profitable keywords – start from that – and look at the longer tail versions that could be most relevant to it. So rather than say Bahamas vacations, “what’s the best family vacation deal for the Bahamas?”.
That’s probably a good keyword longer tail that could be on voice search right? Bahamas vacations might be your number one keyword but like “what’s the best family vacation deal for the Bahamas?” is a really good voice search keyword. It gives you so much more information than just Bahamas vacation. It tells you that they are looking for a deal. It tells you that they are family and they probably have immediate purchase intent. So try to look at those type of queries and then you can think about how do I best optimise, do I have a page that answers that question? Do I have a page that talks about this family vacations? Do I have enough supporting content? And that’s all it is. It’s like think about the intent and the right actions that they are likely to take and optimise just for that.

Guys, whether you like it or you don’t Voice Search is here to stay.
Not many people are talking about it but when it comes to voice search there is no competition for the SERPs positions a there is only one position THE MOST RELEVANT.
So if your company is not there yo gonna suffer big time in the future.
Many people are asking me ‘Where should I start with Voice Search?’
Well, my video with Purna Virji is a good starting point.
But I will also ask you to go back in time and read the Google Semantic Search by Mr. David Amerland as relevancy is getting more and more important by the day.

Guys, next week I am going to the biggest SEO conference in Europe – Brighton SEO – where I will be presenting but you do come back here next Sunday because you’ve got the problems and I’ve got the solutions.

Love you. Peace.