Voice search is becoming ever more important to customers and businesses alike. More people than ever use their mobile phones to perform voice searches, particularly for local businesses. With the advent of devices such as Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant, people will increasingly search by voice rather than having to go to the inconvenience of typing out a search query. It’s quicker and often more accurate, with better results.
Because of this rise in voice search, locally based businesses need to optimize their online presence for voice search. While using keywords is necessary for search engine optimization, voice chat works differently, so standard keywords are not enough. Think about how people speak. They tend to use whole sentences and speak in a chatty, more conversational way, and this is also how they search. Instead of saying “Gym, Orange County,” they’re more likely to say, “Is there a local gym near me in Orange County?” They may even also search for the types of exercise they want to do in the same manner, with queries such as, “Do any gyms in Orange County run spin classes?”
If your gym isn’t set up to be found for queries like that, you may find you are losing leads to any competitors that have optimized for voice search, and that’s not something you can afford.
Don’t get left behind. Follow our local voice SEO tips for gyms, and you’ll soon be back in the game.
Understanding voice search
Voice search uses voice recognition technology to turn voice search into text queries. While that might sound as if standard SEO techniques would work, these voice queries, as we described above, are far more conversational and do use grammar rules. They are also more often question-based. You’d expect a voice query to contain a complete thought rather than just a fragment of a sentence.
While you may already be using long-tail keywords in your content online, you really do have to optimize your content for these long-tail queries if you want to benefit from voice search. Obviously, that changes the way you optimize your content for local search.
We know that Google wants to provide the most relevant and valuable information to searchers and tailoring your content to suit voice queries is more likely to get your content shown in rich answer boxes and featured snippets.
For many gym and fitness businesses, this may require a complete review and refresh of their content online, but it is important because voice searchers are far more likely to be looking for a local business, which gives you a new and highly effective way of reaching your ideal audience.
From Web FX’s 9 Voice Search Trends for 2024 (And Their Statistics):
- “72% of voice-activated speaker owners use voice search to find information on local businesses.”
- “22% of voice search queries are for local content.”
- “More than 50% of voice-enabled speaker owners would like to receive updates about deals, promotions, and sales from brands.”
From Techjury’s 50+ Voice Search Stats to Help You Rethink Your Strategy in 2024:
- “72% of people who own a voice search device say it has become a part of their daily routine.”
- “28% of people contact the business after doing a voice search.”
It’s clear from the above statistics that voice search is here to stay and that optimizing for it has many benefits for fitness businesses.
Platforms such as Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana are far better at voice recognition and understanding than they were when they first came out. This makes them more helpful to customers trying to get information than they were initially. When someone searches via voice, these devices ‘listen’ and then turn the query into a text query to search online. They vary in price and ability, and what you can do will depend on which device you choose, but they all work in basically the same way. We talked about question-based, more conversational content earlier, and that’s true with these devices. However, they can only respond with what they can find online and if your gym doesn’t have voice-optimized content, including Q&As, these devices may not be able to return answers with a great deal of detail or information to their users.
Why voice search matters
Reading this article, you may well be thinking about having to add yet another item to your to-do list in terms of updating and optimizing your content. However, given that voice search is likely to continue to improve – especially with the advent of AI chat capabilities, more people are likely to adopt voice search in the future, and you can’t afford to be left behind.
Yes, you will need to look at your content and update it to suit voice search where necessary, but this will make your content more keyword-rich, without any need for keyword stuffing, and potentially allow your quality content to appear in featured snippets and rich answer boxes. Improving your content for voice search will also improve it for SEO in general and give you greater visibility in local search.
You’ll also be pleasing both existing and potential customers because you’ll make life easier for them. They’ll be able to search hands-free and find your gym, and they’ll more easily find classes you offer and other things you’d want them to know about who you are and what you offer. You’re also giving them more options for how to find you through local search. Anything that reduces friction in the buying process is a good thing, and you should find that you receive more local search queries once you optimize for local search.
Allowing customers to more easily voice search for you will also help you connect more closely with your potential gym members in your local area. They’ll be able to find you on your Google Business Profile, search your website, and find you across the internet, and it will be far quicker and easier to get in touch with you or to call in and see you.
Don’t forget that statistic above from Techjury – “28% of people contact the business after doing a voice search.” That’s over a quarter of people who use voice search and that’s one statistic you can’t ignore.
Voice SEO strategies for local visibility
So, now you know more about how voice search works and why it matters, here are our local voice SEO tips for gyms to help you optimize your content and attract more local members:
1) Local keyword research
Look at your website statistics and your social media analytics. These statistics and sites such as https://answerthepublic.com/ will help you find out what people are searching for and the exact ways in which they are phrasing their questions. Obviously, you can also chat with people in person and on social media and see what kind of questions they have and what language and any jargon they might use when asking.
You can then incorporate both these questions and their answers in your content, using long-tail conversational keywords with local intent. Do this wherever you get the opportunity – on your website, in directory listings, on your Google Business Profile Q&A section, and when answering questions on social media.
If you don’t already have one, a specific Q&A or FAQ page can help you optimize for voice search.
One other thing to note is that Google seems to like very short and succinct answers to voice search queries. If you can, try to get what you want to say within around 29 words. However, they do seem to also choose what to show in voice search results from high-quality long-form content, so the way to go seems to be to put your “nutshell” version first and then expand on the answer to create a long-form piece of content.
2) Local SEO tactics
If you’ve ever read any of our previous articles about local search, you’ll already know we highly recommend claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile, Yelp profile, and Bing Places profile, creating an Apple ID for your Apple Maps listing, and creating locally relevant content.
You absolutely must fill in every part of each of these profiles, along with any business directories you want to appear in, and use what you learned above to introduce Q&As with the questions and answers written in the way that your audience is actually searching.
You can also include local keywords along with your long-tail keywords to ensure you are found on local search.
In addition, you could create a specific page with local information about your local area and optimize your content on this page too. It’s particularly important to do this if your gym has more than one location.
3) Mobile optimization
If you’re not already optimizing your website for mobile, then you are losing out in any kind of search. Google is now mobile-first and tends to lower sites in the search engine results that aren’t mobile-friendly. This isn’t just something to do for voice search, but something you need to do anyway. However, mobile-friendly pages do have more of a chance of appearing in voice search results.
You also need to have fast-loading pages generally, because people no longer have the patience to wait for a slow-loading site, and you can find you come up more often in voice search for local information if your site is particularly fast.
4) Structured data markup for local businesses
This is quite advanced, but implementing schema markup for local business details and enhancing your local search results with structured data may make a difference with voice search. Backlinko did a study back in 2018 that found that “36.4% of voice search result pages used Schema markup (vs. 31.3% for the average page on the internet).” They concluded that “63.6% of voice search results don’t use Schema at all, and therefore, it’s unlikely that Schema has a direct impact on voice search rankings.” However, they did note that using Schema “can improve your search visibility on any platform. So it makes sense to use it, even if it won’t necessarily help with voice search SEO.”
5) Maintaining consistent information
Again, this is something we recommend anyway as good practice for building your online reputation, but it is still important that you ensure consistency in your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) across every platform and profile you have. This includes social media, your website, your Google Business Profile, and any directory listings you may have. This will help you when customers find you either with a standard search or a voice search as they can be sure they have the right information to get in touch and to visit your gym. This really does matter to your online reputation, as if that NAP information isn’t consistent online, not only will potential members wonder if they’re looking at the same company, but so will Google. If Google isn’t convinced which company is yours and if you’re genuine, they will consider lowering your site and other online platform results in the search results.
You now have some tips that can help you be found in voice search that will also help to build your online reputation in general. Look at your content and your long-tail keywords, optimize for mobile, and watch your site speed, ensure you claim the most important platforms online, such as your Google Business Profile and thoroughly optimize them, consider setting up schema markup, and ensure your NAP is consistent everywhere online.
You should then find you have the best possible chance to come up in voice search, and you may even be ahead of your competitors. It may take time, but it’s well worth investing in voice search best practices to enhance your local presence and boost your online reputation.
Master Voice SEO with Surefire Local’s Marketing Software
If you’d like some help with local search or any other aspect of your marketing, Surefire Local is all about helping small businesses establish their online presence by creating local signals across platforms and profiles in the form of content, photos, reviews, ads, etc. that make it easier for new customers to connect with them. We are the #1 marketing platform for local businesses and our all-in-one marketing software is available to make optimizing your online presence for voice search simple by managing all aspects of your voice SEO strategies within one platform.
Why not book a demo today to see how our professional marketing platform can help you consistently gain local leads while saving time and money?