The Best Organic SEO For Voice, Mobile and Local Search
You’ve rushed out the door, buckled yourself into the driver’s seat, but en route to that important meeting you realise you’re about to run out of gas. A quick finger touch on your mobile, ask out loud “Google/Siri, nearest gas station”, and within seconds you’re being directed to the nearest pump. Sound familiar?
Voice search for local services on mobile phones is a modern day convenience an estimated 27% of people around the globe routinely use to connect with nearby products and services via their mobile phones, according to Google. With that number growing by the day, it’s clear why any business wanting to connect with more customers on a local level needs to have affordable search engine optimization (SEO) services, which are hyper-geared for voice and local search.
Local and voice search aside, with mobile search volumes finally overtaking desktop search in 2020, we know that smart phones are the device from which the majority of searching happens today (more on how to set your website up for mobile search here). So much so that in mid-2021 Google made mobile-first indexing a priority for websites to receive good Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) ranking.
It follows that in addition to optimizing for voice and local search, optimizing both the front and back-end of your website for mobile is now a non-negotiable in any solid SEO strategy. So let’s dig deeper to see how mobile-first optimization can be geared to get the best out of organic SEO voice and local search too.
3 Ways To Harness The Power Of Mobile-first SEO
1. Choose Mobile-First Design
We live in an age where smart phones are pulled out at any free moment to pass the time – quite literally for the 75% of Americans who admitted to bringing their mobile phones into the bathroom. This high volume usage makes designing a website to function smoothly across mobile phone platforms absolutely crucial.
‘An in-home eye-tracking study Facebook IQ commissioned in the US revealed that 94% of participants kept a smartphone on hand while watching TV, making mobile nearly as common a TV companion as a remote control’
Some older websites, however, do need to be re-engineered to work well on mobile. A free resource to test how mobile friendly your website is provided by Google here.
2. Write For Voice Search
With smart phones comes the somewhat Star Trek Enterprise level of futuristic technology – voice search. Voice search uses the same principles as typed search in that it’s all linked to keywords, but there is a key difference between typed and voice search.
Google, Alexa, Siri – they all perform the function of searching, but in a far more interactive and human-like way. Because of this personable exchange we are more conversational and polite, and the search terms are different compared to typing them out.
For example, when typing in a search phrase it’s common to be short and succinct such as ‘Starbucks operating hours’. Whereas if we voice search it is more likely to be the politer version of ‘Siri, What are the operating hours for Star Bucks?’.
‘20% of queries on Google’s mobile app and Android devices are made with voice, while 31% of smartphone users use voice at least once a week’
– Search Engine Watch
This means the keywords a website is using need to include common long-tail keywords found in conversational style text bodies (i.e. the polite, conversational search phrases as opposed to the impolite typed search phrases).
A great way to work on upping long-tail keywords on a website is to head to the FAQ page and add in questions that a potential customer may use in voice search. Create questions around the ‘why, who, what and how’ of a business and then structure great, conversational-style answers to these. Ideally write a short succinct answer in one or two lines under the question that Google will be able to identify and use as a SERP snippet, and then go into more detail below.
A simple example of a good voice-orientated search phrase would be an FAQ like “What time does Mike’s Hardware open and close?”, with the answer, “Mike’s Hardware opens at 7am Monday to Friday and closes at 5pm. On weekends Mike’s hardware is open from 8am to 11am”. The top SEO consultants agree that even if the information is repeated more factually elsewhere on the website, this is an easy way to include the information to suit voice search.
3. Optimize For Local Search
Optimizing for local search in the voice- and mobile-first context is particularly significant if a business runs from a physical location or has a shop front. This is because most local business searches are performed on smart phones, especially using voice search.
When customers need a quick answer, it generally means they are ready to make a purchase ASAP and therefore need answers pronto. Think about needing to find a suitable restaurant for lunch, or a shop to buy a spark plug or a bunch of flowers for a friend’s birthday – you need that information immediately to solve an issue. In these cases, you need to make sure that your business is jumping straight to the top of the local pack.
‘Surveys have found that following a local search on a mobile device, 88% of consumers will either call or visit the business within 24 hours’
– Local IQ
One way of making sure your web local search is optimized is setting up Google my Business and keeping all contact details (name, address, and phone number) up to date. If any of these details change and a potential customer either tries to call a phone number that no longer exists or arrives at an incorrect address, the business instantly loses credibility and trustworthiness, not to mention a potential sale.
Does aiNANSI Optimize For Mobile?
The short answer is yes: aiNANSI’s artificial intelligence (AI) software, backed by a team of human SEO experts, ensures that every client’s website is fully optimized for mobile, including voice and local search via mobile phones.
The long answer is: as part of the client onboarding process for aiNANSI’s affordable SEO packages, our team of experts analyses the client’s website to check for mobile compatibility and related SEO functionality, such as page load speeds and UX (user experience) design.
If the tech team finds any mobile-first optimization that needs to be changed or upgraded, the client will be notified immediately. Should these issues be within the tech team’s mandate (i.e. basic SEO functionality that can be adapted on the back-end), aiNANSI’s tech gurus will automatically get everything ship-shape for mobile – all at no charge.
Should the analysis pull up issues beyond the tech team’s mandate (i.e. the website does not have any mobile-first design, requiring an entire re-design), the SEO consulting team will guide the client through what needs to be done. aiNANSI will continue to keep a beady eye on the website to ensure it’s always optimized to be mobile-first throughout the client’s subscription period.
Does aiNANSI Optimize For Local & Voice Search?
The short answer again is: yes and yes.
The long answer: the 20-30 Top Ranking Keywords aiNANSI needs to get started are generated based on the client’s location, industry, target audience, business objectives and other variables, which are all pivotal to Local and Voice Search.
The AI then continues to generate a live list of the Top Ranking Keywords (the keywords on your website that are generating the most search results), every minute of every day. This enables our team of human SEO consultants to look for more keywords related to the Top Ranking Keywords and replace poor ranking keywords with these, and this includes keywords for Local and Voice search.
All this leads to a clear end result: when your next potential customer asks their mobile ‘Google, find this business near me’ via voice search, your website will come up top of search and that customer will head straight to you to convert their search into real business.
Need more info on how aiNANSI can boost your website’s local, voice and mobile SEO? Contact us here.
