Do you know how your customers are finding your home services business online? Chances are more and more are utilizing voice search as it’s become easily accessible and ingrained into our daily lives. Estimates have it that over one billion voice searches are conducted monthly.
Voice search technology enables a user to speak voice commands that are subsequently used to conduct searches on the World Wide Web, an application, or a website. The technology is growing in popularity and more home appliances and handheld devices have voice search capabilities. As a home service industry provider, you need to adopt and embrace smart speakers since they are the main driving force behind the utilization of voice search technology. Siri, Alexa, Google voice search, and Cortana are some technologies that will serve you as a home service industry professional—whether as a roofer, HVAC, remodeling, or windows expert and help you reach out to more customers.
Overview of Siri
Siri is one of the top voice search platforms which is being used by a sizeable portion of people to seek information online. Whether your customers want to ask a question or to conduct a quick fact check, Siri is a platform of choice to many, especially because of its applicability and ease of use. Even if your client doesn’t ask a question directly, Siri works as a personal assistant and uses past search results to anticipate possible information that your customer may be seeking.
Tips and steps for how to optimize your home services business on Siri
There are several tips you can utilize to help customers access details about your business when using a voice search on Siri.
- First, use conversational words on your website instead of short-tail keywords that are the norm in typed searches.
- Ensure local friendliness when making websites and applications meant to advertise your services to clients. A potential customer can seek roofers or any other home service industry professional in close vicinity through a voice search on Siri. As a result, your website and app should have information about the location of the business. You could input more specific information such as postal code, address region, address locality, and street address.
- Use a lot of metadata in your company website that will enhance quick and accurate results from clients that will use voice searches on Siri. Some of the components of metadata that you need to put in your company website or app include the business location, price of different services, phone number.
- The content in your company website and app should be straight to the point for a customer to get instant and direct results in case of a voice search through Siri.
Overview of Alexa
Amazon Alexa displays immense versatility as a digital assistant that users can utilize to answer a wide array of questions and perform different tasks. Alexa can be used on a group of Amazon’s devices such as Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, the Tap, Fire HD 8 tablet, and Fire TV set-top box. Alexa can be used by multiple users in a household by creating a unique voice profile for each user.
Tips and steps for how to optimize your home services business on Alexa
As a home service industry professional, it is imperative that you optimize search results for your potential clients who may search for your services through Alexa.
- Voice search queries appear longer because people tend to be more descriptive when they talk compared with when they type. For instance, a customer may type through a desktop “roofers near me,” but the same client on Alexa will ask, “Alexa, who is the cheapest roofer near me?” In this regard, it is always important to add minute details to your website such as price and location that will aid more accurate results.
- Ensure that the content has simple words that average clients can use when seeking information about your services. The key is to have approximately 30 to 40-word answers that are comprehendible to a 6-7th grade student since simplicity in voice searches is the key to success.
Overview of Google Home
Google has also released Google Home Wi-Fi-enabled smart speakers that have gained acceptance by people who use voice search to get information online.
The greatest unique features of Google Home smart speakers are its Google integration capabilities and voice-activated search functions. Google Home is integrated with other Google services, including Keep and Calendar and synchronizes search information with personal account information.
Recent updates have also improved the functioning of the device, making it work seamlessly with Google Accounts with the ability to identify different users based on their unique voice signatures.
Therefore, Google Home will identify your customers’ identity based on their voice and will weave the searches with their previous search history and any other information from other Google services.
Tips and steps for how to optimize your home services business on Google Home
Here are a few useful tips to maximize search results for customers who want to access your services through Google Home voice search technology.
- Always remember that Google prefers concise replies when answering voice search questions. Therefore, ensure that you can anticipate some of the answers that a customer would seek, and provide short answers to these questions on your company’s website. For instance, in case a customer’s voice searches Google Home for roofers in Texas, the website should have a short statement like, “Trident Texas Roofing Solutions.”
- Optimize your business for voice searches using mobile devices. Failure to suit available data with strong mobile experiences will lock out a big percentage of potential clients from accessing your services. Additionally, it is also a means of avoiding penalties from Google. Normally, Google may choose to penalize sites that are irresponsive when clients access the websites. Imagine when a large number of clients have used voice search to access your site only to find the site is non-functional. It is frustrating and will diminish customer experience that may harm the image that clients have about your business.
- It is also important to create a portfolio for your business in the Google My Business listing that is done for free. Adding your business to this listing boosts the chances of your business appearing in search results for voice searches. Google views its data as more reliable than data provided from third parties, and thus businesses not listed within Google My Business listing will be outperformed during voice searches by businesses found in the list.
Overview of Cortana
Microsoft released their voice search platform Cortana to tap into the emerging market. Cortana is a voice-activated service that enables your customers to make requests and ask questions on Windows 10, and can also work on Android and Apple products.
Tips and steps for how to optimize your home services business on Cortana
Here are a few useful tips for maximizing your online presence when customers use voice search on Cortana.
- Unlike other voice search tools, Cortana draws search results from Bing. which attracts few marketers, meaning that marketers that place their results on Bing have a higher chance of drawing top spots from voice searches.
- It is important to ensure that available data includes location as potential customers will always seek the services of a home service industry professional that is found in close vicinity.
- Also, register your business on Bing Places for Business since it will automatically register your business on Bing Maps.
- Always ensure that your content is adequately indexed and is readily available on all relevant and major sources of online data. These data sources include sites such as Wikipedia, Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Google Search.
- Aim at ranking on the first page of results from different search engines.
Bottom Line
The world is rapidly changing especially in the digital marketing sphere, and if you want to optimize your business for voice search, you have to pay attention to the changes. Ultimately, voice search and the use of voice search platforms are the new kids in the block for small businesses. To achieve the best results and stay in business in 2021 and beyond, your business should adhere to SEO best practices that are used to rank web pages within search engines.
So, you want your business to rank in voice search results, but you are thinking, “Getting my website optimized for voice search is too much work!” Worry no more. You can improve your local dominance and get your business in the phase of unlimited growth by utilizing the Surefire Local Marketing Platform. The platform will help your business by removing digital roadblocks, gives you insights, and helps you take actions that will steer your home services business to a profitable level.