Have you ever asked Alexa or Siri to “find” a business near you? Perhaps you want to call the local pizza shop to place an order, but your hands are full. Voice search tools make that easy to do. Whether a person is planning to call a service provider directly or just wants to find out where a local provider is, voice search is the hands-free, easy way to do so.
It is growing in use, too. It’s estimated that there are more than 30,000 smart home devices that operate on Google Assistant alone. More so, about 58% of consumers say they are using voice search to find the business services they need and want.
As an optometrist, you may be unsure how this plays a role in creating the type of results you want and need. How will voice search help you to reach your most likely patients? How does this increase your brand visibility?
By optimizing for voice search, you are able to build your ability for search engines to find your eye doctor’s office or optometrist practice when they are searching for information using their voice. A prospective patient may ask Google to pull up a list of local optometrists near them. By optimizing your voice search, you will be on that list. How do we make this happen? Check out these local voice SEO tips for optometrists and how they can work to meet your needs.
Understanding voice search
The statistics show that voice search is a highly valuable tool for any business, including optometrists, eye doctors, and eyeglass providers. People use voice search to find the services they need that are local to them.
Voice search includes any instance in which a person uses speech to search for something rather than using a keyboard to type it into a search engine. The most commonly used voice search tools include those used in homes, in businesses, and through smartphones. That includes Google Assistant, Siri from Apple, and Amazon’s Alexa.
These tools have the ability to find answers to a person’s questions based on what is available online. When you optimize your business for voice search, you are creating highly in-tune, targeted information that these devices can quickly pull up and present to the searcher.
Why voice search matters
Traditional search engine methods use short phrases, such as “eye doctor,” to help find a specific service for the searcher. In this situation, Google would use the location of the searcher to pull up relevant eye doctors near them.
With voice search, there are many different questions being asked, and as a result, you need to tailor your responses to them. For example, a person may ask Google Assistant, “What time is the local optometrist open until today?”
Consumers want to pull up information and get the data they need without having to pull their phones out or use a laptop to type it into Google. Because of this, voice search has become a critical tool for building local SEO strategies.
What can voice search do for your optometrist’s office?
- By optimizing for voice search, you are able to meet your patients’ needs for using this tool in their home.
- You are able to communicate valuable information to your patients who are looking for solutions.
- It allows you to connect with people within the local community who need your services specifically, including booking an appointment.
- Voice search helps to improve your local presence online. In fact, some research indicates that mobile voice searchers are three times as likely to be local-based questions.
- It also helps to build your online authority, which helps Google to value your optometrist office as a valuable resource to those looking for services.
Voice SEO Strategies for Local Visibility
Now that you know the importance and benefits of using voice search optimization, the question many have is how to do it. The key way to do this is to incorporate several simple strategies into the process. Follow these tips for a voice search for optometrists.
Local keyword research
Learn more about the local keywords that your patients search for when it comes to your services. The goal is to include more long-tail conversational keywords with local intent, plus addressing specific questions.
For example, what type of questions are your patients likely to ask a search engine? They may ask about services, how to get an appointment, what appointments cost, and when to see an optometrist. Once you flesh out some ideas about what people are using (and the right tools make this easier to do), you can then incorporate those questions on your website with answers.
Local SEO tactics
Make sure you employ all methods of local SEO to support voice search. This includes:
- Google Business Profile: Claim yours and ensure it is updated to include local keywords.
- Fill out your Yelp profile and ensure it is complete with a description of your services and keywords
- Complete your Bing Places profile, which is much the same but ideal for those using the Bing platform for searching
- Create an Apple ID that can be used for Apple Maps listings, which can be a very helpful way for people using Siri to find your services
Then, create local content. That is, include content that’s interesting, useful to local patients, and helps to provide insight about your company and services. This may include details about the service area you provide for, the metro area, the counties you service, and any other details about your location that could help distinguish your business from others.
Mobile optimizations
Not everyone is using an at-home device to tap into the benefits of voice search. For that reason, you want to be sure that anyone using a smartphone can easily access and use your site, including the smart assistants that are doing the searching for them.
To do this, consider these tips:
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. If it is not or has not been updated yet, this is a critical investment that will impact all types of digital marketing for your practice.
- Ensure it loads fast. Your optometrist website should not have graphics or other data that takes too long to load. It has to open in seconds.
- Include a local page that includes local information, such as details about the local community and perhaps even how your organization supports the community.
Structured data markup for local businesses
Structured data is a type of standardized format that provides very specific information about a page. It helps to classify the page content for Google. Schema markup, which is what structured data is, is a type of language that the search engines use to read the content on your page.
How does this matter to your optometrist website and voice search? Implement schema markup on your site that includes local business details. Your location, your services, your customers, and your community information can be included. This helps to enhance local search results. The better you do this, the more likely it is for the search engines to return your location as a solution for the service.
Maintaining consistent information
Another very important component to finding success with voice search is to incorporate very accurate data. Your NAP – Name, Address, and Phone – should be exactly the same on your website, on your Google Business Profile, and on any directories that list your website. The consistency of NAP helps Google to correlate your business to the physical location. This, too, helps to boost your local search success.
You will want to ensure all platforms and profiles (social media, your blog, directories, listings like Yelp, Apple Maps, Google Maps, and so on) have the exact same information. Managing your information to be very uniform like this is critical to creating a cohesive, consistent level of communication within the search engines.
There are a lot of steps to creating the best possible local strategy to support voice search. However, each of these small steps helps to create a bigger picture, one that allows you to help people find your optometrist office when they need it.
Let Surefire Local Make the Entire Process Easy for You
There are certainly a lot of benefits to incorporating voice search optimization. However, you will need to put in some time to get it all in place and work to achieve your goals. That is where Surefire Local can offer help.
When you incorporate voice SEO strategies into your website, you will improve your local visibility. It is critical to invest in voice search best practices that help to build your local presence online. Then, let us help you.
When you attend a Surefire Local demo, you will learn how to master each of these tools, creating a cohesive strategy that allows every voice assistant to gain access to your site.
Surefire Local is all about helping small businesses like your optometrist practice establish themselves online, building local signals across all platforms to help your patients and prospective patients find you. Let us help you optimize your voice search using the tools our platform incorporates.
Check out a demo of how Surefire Local can work for your optometrist office now.