Running a pet spa or pet grooming business is a lot of work. You need to make sure that you’re providing great service for your furry customers and the families that trust you with their care, training, or grooming. But at the same time, you need to focus on building your business and finding more customers in your local area.
Digital marketing is a great way to get discovered online and expand the reputation of your pet spa business. However, the same tactics that may have been helpful four or five years ago aren’t the same approaches that will get you the same results today. Digital marketing is constantly evolving, and that has an impact on pet spa owners and other small businesses.
Voice search is an emerging channel for digital marketing that needs to be a priority in your future planning. Optimizing your business for voice search in the context of local search marketing can help you get discovered by new audiences and get ahead of competitors in the same space.
Understanding Voice Search
Voice search is the latest evolution of online searching. Rather than typing a question into a search engine like Google, you instead activate a voice assistant and ask the question aloud, then have the response pulled up for you or read aloud by the assistant tool. Voice search makes it easier for you to find information without needing your hands free or to open a browser on a device, like a phone, tablet, or computer.
Voice search works to eliminate background noise, understand your query, connect to different online sources, and translate that information back to you. It’s the way the search industry is shifting to adapt to the needs of more customers, and will continue to grow in popularity as voice assistants and smart speakers become more common in homes.
More than 20% of searches in Google use voice search, and the smart speaker market is expected to grow to $30 billion by the end of 2024. With these statistics in mind, it’s clear that having a strategy to adapt your local search efforts for voice search is important. The more voice-activated devices you can rank high with, the more local queries you can get discovered for.
There are a few different platforms that have a stronghold in the growing market, including:
- Siri: Siri is a voice assistant available through Apple for iOS, macOS, and watchOS devices. Siri was one of the first virtual assistants, and can be used for more than just searches, like sending texts, making calls, or setting alarms on certain Apple devices.
- Alexa: Alexa is the voice assistant tool available through Amazon. Alexa is a cloud-based service that is available on devices through Amazon, like smart home speakers and Amazon tablets. It can help connect you to other Amazon products, like smart home devices or Amazon-owned apps.
- Google Assistant: The Google Assistant comes from, unsurprisingly, Google. It’s available on all Android devices and on the regular Google browser. Google Assistant helps users launch apps and search for queries. It has immediate connections to the Google search engine and other Google-backed applications.
- Cortana: Cortana is the voice assistant available through Microsoft 365. It is marketed more towards helping users with productivity, offering tools to accomplish tasks, answer questions, and operate Windows systems. However, it was largely discontinued in 2023, but will most likely make a return in a different form.
Why Voice Search Matters
Voice search isn’t going away. In fact, it’s only growing year after year. For small local businesses, voice search provides a new opportunity to increase your online visibility and grow your brand’s presence in local searches. Imagine that you were able to get in on the ground floor of social media marketing, before the space became so crowded. Voice search gives your pet spa business the opportunity to get ahead.
Consumers continue to shift their behavior to have a stronger preference for voice-activated devices. It’s more convenient to ask a question in the air and know your smart speaker or mobile device will pick up the query and provide an answer than to find your computer and type it into a browser. For local searches, people want immediate answers if they need to get their pet groomed or trained.
There are more opportunities for local businesses to connect with nearby customers through voice search by optimizing your online presence for a voice search query. You can get discovered for any “near me” or “open now” searches within your industry through voice search. However, you need to have a strong strategy with local voice SEO tactics for pet spas in mind before you get started.
Voice SEO Strategies for Local Visibility
Let’s go through some of the best practices and most valuable strategies for local SEO voice searches to help increase your online presence and visibility in voice search results.
Local Keyword Research
Keywords can become incredibly competitive, making it hard for you to rank high in searches like “pet spa” or “pet groomer near me”. However, by focusing on long-tail, conversational keywords that are more likely to be asked in voice search, you can rank higher for local intent. For example, the keyword, “What local pet spas are open today”, might be a more effective keyword to focus on for your business. You can also address specific local queries, like searches that use your neighborhood nickname, street address, or city name. By answering questions with context, you can improve your online visibility.
Local SEO Tactics
In order to get discovered in a voice search, you need to have your local SEO tactics optimized. Make sure you are listed on the different search engines utilized by voice assistants, like a Google Business Profile, Yelp listing, and Bing Places profile. You’ll also need to create an Apple ID for your Apple Maps listing.
Once you’ve got your profiles set up on all relevant platforms, you can start creating locally relevant content. That includes the content that uses local keywords and answers the questions asked in voice searches.
Mobile Optimizations
Most voice searches take place on smart speakers or on mobile devices like smartphones. It’s important to make sure your online presence is optimized for these tools. Your website should have a responsive design for mobile devices. That helps to ensure that your pages load fast, and your overall SEO rankings are higher than slow-loading competitors.
You should also ensure that your pages have local information and keywords. Try creating specific location pages for all your areas of service, and add in more location details on other pages, like your About Us page or Home page.
Structured Data Markup for Local Businesses
Structured data markup is code that can be used to directly pull product data or other key information from your website to display in search results. For example, you might be able to add a structured data markup to display your services if someone searches for them.
You can implement a scheme markup for your pet spa business details, which enhances local search results with structured data designed for voice search.
Maintaining Consistent Information
As you build your online presence across multiple platforms and channels, it becomes even more important to maintain consistency. You will struggle to rank high in results if one voice search pulls up one set of information, but another assistant finds different information.
Ensure that your NAP (name, address, phone number) is consistent across all platforms and profiles online. That way, someone using Siri and someone using Google Assistant get the same important details. Managing your information for uniformity builds a stronger online presence and optimizes your pet spa business for voice search.
Optimize Your Local Voice SEO Tactics for Pet Spas
Local voice SEO tactics for pet spas don’t have to be overly complicated. By optimizing in a few key areas and staying educated on the best practices for local visibility, you can start ranking higher on search engine results for voice searches. It’s important for local businesses to invest in these strategies to enhance their local presence and get discovered faster in voice search.
At Surefire Local, we’re all about helping small businesses establish their online presence by creating local signals across platforms and profiles in the form of content, photos, reviews, and advertising. We make it easier for new customers to connect to your pet spa business with the help of our all-in-one marketing platform.
Surefire Local is the #1 marketing platform for local businesses, and we can help you establish yourself as a voice search leader in your local area. By optimizing your online presence for voice search and managing all aspects of your voice SEO strategies within one platform, you can step ahead of your competition and grow your business. To learn more about Surefire Local and how we can help support your marketing efforts, sign up to attend a Surefire Local marketing demo today.