I was recently in Vegas for a business meeting (and to pay tribute to the blackjack gods). As I was walking out of the Bellagio after being drunk for three days I needed a coffee, but my hands were full carrying my Chinese knockoff RIMOWA luggage and a peach mango BodyArmor (RIP Koby) — so I used voice search. Voice search SEO isn’t a new field, but it’s importance in an SEO mix — especially for local SEO — has become greater.
This post will cover how to voice search is changing SEO, voice search SEO vs traditional SEO, and
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What is Voice Search SEO
Voice search is when a user queries a smartphone or smart speaker about a topic. Voice search SEO is the optimization of a business profile for a query related to their business. The most used voice search softwares are Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and Amazon’s Alexa. Each source their data from different locations
How to Do SEO for Voice Search
For this section I’m going to focus on local searches, since the majority of voice searches are geography related. To do SEO for Voice Search you’ll need to have priorities of which places you believe people are going to be searching for your business. For restaurants, people do searches like “pizza near me” on Siri and Google Maps. A query like this is notifying the voice AI that you’re looking for a place to buy pizza in the proximity to you. Contrast this with “best pizza in denver” which signals you want the best pizza in Denver, not pizza near you, even if you’re in Denver.
To rank for a query like “pizza near me” you need to be in the physical proximity of the voice search and have trained the robots to understand that you’re a pizza joint. Being in the proximity is hard to control, but controlling teaching the softwares is as easy as telling them.
Since Apple Maps and Google Maps are the most used platforms for geography related searches, you’ll want to optimize your listings on both platforms — they aren’t the same data.
Let’s start with Google Maps, because Apple Maps is trickier. Google Maps data pulls directly from Google My Business. Google My Business is a software Google provides business owners for free to seed Google Maps data. Being on Google My Business is the only way to show up on Google Maps.
To optimize your Google My Business profile have you brand name and target keyword in the business title, make sure your profile is complete with address and phone number, have photos, and put keywords related to your product or services in the business description.
Apple Maps is a little tricker since it pulls data from Yelp. The screenshot below illustrates how when you query Siri for “pizza near me”, the results come from Yelp.
So if you want to come up on Apple Maps, you need to optimize your Yelp profile. Disclaimer, Yelp is a known to blackmail business owners. I would strongly suggest investing the minimum in Yelp.
How Voice Search is Changing SEO
Voice search in changing SEO in two ways, voice only returns one result when there isn’t a screen attached to the voice assistant (IE Alexa Echo). This means you have one spot to fight over, not ten.
It is also changing local SEO because all the data that assistants reference is stored on their servers, not your website. This means you have to use their platforms if you want to show up for voice searches.
It’s also taking SEO to a new level of structured data. Structured data is a system of pairing a name with a value that helps search engines categorize and index your content. This schema is robot friendly and can make or break SEOs for information around who, what and how.
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