Like regular text search, voice search can be an amazing lead generation tool, driving high-quality and high-intention traffic directly to your pet spa’s appointment book. But like other forms of search engine optimization (SEO), your online presence won’t automatically optimize itself.
These voice SEO tips for pet spas will help you reach more clients.
Voice search trends that matter to pet spas
How many people use voice search?
As a whole, around 40% of all US Internet searches are now voice searches daily and 58% of people use voice search to find local businesses, such as pet spas.
27% of people use their smartphone for voice searches and 74% of “local customers” search online before visiting the business in person.
Voice SEO tips for pet spas can help you reach your pet spa audience among these people.
How do people use voice search?
People use voice across the customer journey. Voice SEO isn’t just about targeting keywords. People use lots of different words to say the same thing. It’s better to think of voice SEO in terms of the broader goal they want to accomplish.
- The nearest location that offers a service
- Online reviews
- How to solve a problem… in this case, a pet grooming problem
- Directions to your location
- Scheduling, confirming, or canceling an appointment
We can break these down into two kinds of searches:
- Discovery Search – Asking questions to try to find a business that does what they need (e.g., “What’s the best pet spa near me” or “Who does the best Teddy Bear Cut near me?”)
- Direct Search – Asking questions about a specific business (e.g., “what’s ABC Pet Groomer’s star rating?” OR “Make an appointment at ABC Pet Groomer”)
Voice SEO tips for pet spas consider how people use search to make your online presence more “visible” (findable) in voice search.
Where do you need to optimize for voice search?
There are currently 4 big players in the industry:
- Google Assistant
- Siri
- Alexa
- Cortana
According to a Microsoft survey, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant hold the most share of voice users. They claim around 36% of voice searches each. This lines up with roughly one-half of smartphones being Apple and the other half Android in the US.
Amazon’s Alexa was preferred by 25% of survey respondents and Microsoft’s Cortana gets 19%. These numbers add up to greater than 100%, meaning some people use more than one—maybe home and work or home and on the go. 72% of people surveyed said they have used voice search at least once in the past 6 months.
Which one will matter most to your pet spa depends on which ones your target audience uses. But fortunately, optimizing for one more or less optimizes all of them—to a certain extent.
Voice SEO tips for pet spas help you optimize within these Big 4 voice search leaders.
Voice SEO tips for pet spas: how to grow your presence with your voice SEO?
It’s important to note that many pet spa tips for voice search optimization also increase visibility in local SEO as a whole. So when you optimize for voice, you get more than added pet spa appointments through voice.
1. Claim + optimize business listings
Business pages equal instant online visibility for your pet spa when you optimize them. Regardless of which voice search tool your target audience prefers, you’ll want to optimize all the big business listings. Each voice assistant will have its preference as follows:
- Google Assistant prefers Google My Business (GMB)
- Siri prefers Apple Maps (although the phone owner can change it to Google, and many do)
- Microsoft Cortana prefers Bing Places
- Alexa prefers Yelp
When we’re talking about optimizing for Google vs. Siri, etc. the business listing is the primary difference.
To optimize these listings, you’ll want to apply multiple Voice SEO tips for pet spas:
- First and foremost, don’t rush it. Take your time and pay attention.
- Complete every section.
- Add a link to your website and be absolutely sure it’s an active page.
- Meticulously ensure your contact info, hours, and other business information are the same across listings.
- Choose a primary and secondary category.
- Mark all applicable attributes.
- Take advantage of hours, scheduling, and holiday features.
- Write a complete business description using—but not overusing—related search terms
- Upload high-quality photos and add new photos at least monthly.
- Add special offers and update them regularly.
- Set up messaging and respond to messages timely.
2. Make sure you have consistent and accurate information across your online presence
Beyond your business profiles, make sure your information is the same across all locations like Facebook, Nextdoor, your user-friendly website, directories, and anywhere you are online. If this seems like a lot to keep up with, online listing management software exists, saving you a ton of time while keeping these optimized for voice and regular search.
Employ digital marketing strategies like influencer marketing, guest blogging, and social media management to build a visible, consistent online presence.
Keep in mind, that you’re not trying to become present in voice search for the whole world. The Internet is a massive place. Just having a local presence within the radius where you’re likely to have clients is enough.
3. Pay attention to reviews
Some overlap exists between business listings and reviews. Here are some tactics you can apply within this local voice search strategy.
- Encourage clients to upload photos and share their experiences on your business listings.
- If you’ve identified that one of the above sites drives more voice traffic your way through local marketing software analytics, consider a review campaign where you ask clients to review you there.
- Respond to reviews professionally and frequently. How you respond to negative reviews is as important as getting positive ones.
4. Optimize photos to guide voice searchers to your site
Create lots of high-quality visual content you can share across your online presence. Show happy clients and the services you deliver to them. Post these on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and your business listings. Update these regularly.
Always name photos. Never leave them to default strings of numbers. A photo name is an opportunity to add searchable terms like “Lion cut” or “San Antonio” or both. This helps people find images using voice search. It also makes your website more inclusive and accessible to those who cannot see or read it.
Let these photos and other visuals tell your brand story around the Internet. They will guide people back to your website.
5. Build Content Around How People Speak
Most people speak more casually than they write.
People who study how people talk have recorded grad students in everyday conversations with friends. And even highly-educated people aren’t using what people think of as “college words” most of the time.
Instead, people speak in incomplete sentences to quickly convey a point. They don’t always use the best grammar.
And they’re certainly not sitting on their sofa with a thesaurus to look up the best word for a voice search.
At least not most of us.
For these reasons, your web pages, blog posts, and other content should be written in a conversational writing style. Use shorter sentences that searchers can easily understand. What’s good for Voice SEO is also easier for people to read or hear, so this isn’t either people or search engines.
Keep it conversational as the average 14-year-old would understand. Use words most of your clients do to describe things. You could even use your own voice and a dictation program to “write” your content to accomplish this.
Focus on general education like facts, trends, and how-to’s. These are what people look for using voice when they haven’t chosen a pet spa yet. Answer their questions and they’re likely to become your next clients.
When you ask a question in your content, answer it concisely right after the question. This allows your answer to be read off to the voice searcher. 41% of voice answers come from rich snippets, those quick answers you see at the tops of search results. For this reason, think about what you see there. Probably something like this…
“What are the most popular dog cuts?
- Teddy bear
- Top knot
- Kennel cut”
Online marketing software can help you identify what your target audience is searching for through voice, create and publish that content, and track its performance.
How to easily grow your voice presence
Local voice SEO isn’t just the future. A significant number of local pet parents use voice every day to find businesses like yours. But like local SEO, voice SEO can get complicated fast. You need a plan to keep everything updated, optimized, time-effective, and working to attract customers.
You can easily manage voice SEO and grow your online visibility using Surefire Local’s business intelligence marketing software. Check out our simple small business voice optimization guide to learn more about optimizing voice for pet spas. And consider requesting a demo of our business intelligence marketing software to find out how you can manage your entire marketing strategy from one, easy-to-use platform.