 Wanna know seven steps to get your business ready for voice search? We're talking about it here on The Journey. Cut to the intro. I'm Nealey, that's Emma, and we're talking about seven ways to really get you ready for voice search with your business. Voice is everywhere, especially with the rise of home devices and everyone talking. So Emma, let's really go into why does this matter? Yeah, so by 2020, over 50% of all searches will be voice searches. I think that's really powerful. Also, 65% of people who have a Google home, I know I have one, or an Amazon Echo, they say they can never go back to life without them. Right, it just makes life super convenient because you can go, hey Google, search this, or hey Siri, search that, and isn't it a lot faster too? Yeah, I mean, voice is faster than typing. I know I'm guilty of it, and I'm a pretty patient gal, but when I wanna find something on the go, I'm gonna use voice versus sitting there to type it in. It takes too much time. Voice is like 3.7 times faster, so it's efficient. Yeah, ain't nobody got time for that. Ain't nobody got time for that. All right, so now I'm gonna let you kick it off. What is the first tip for us? Audit your current efforts, and think about this with voice search. You know, what keywords are relevant? What terms are being searched? Very similar to SEL. What long-tailed keywords are being searched? It's really important before going into any other steps is to audit the current efforts. All right, now step two is to really consider position zero on search engines for your small business. Now position zero is basically the questions and answers on search engines. If you've ever gone to a search engine and asked a question, it's right above actual web pages because Google knows it's all about the user experience. You're going on there to ask a question. Instead of having you link down a page and another page, they're just gonna give you the answer. They're finding little clips from web pages already and giving it right to you. So you can potentially leverage that and answer questions on your website and be found on that position zero with those long-tailed search results. Hey Google, how tall is the Eiffel Tower? And you get that instantly instead of having to dig through a page, try to find it, it's just right there. All right, so this brings us to step three, which is all about optimizing your near me searches. Hey Siri, copy near me. And what that's gonna do is Siri knows where you are. It's gonna look up coffee shops in the Kirkland Seattle area and give it right to you. You can do the same thing with your business. If you serve a local audience, you can say, hey Siri, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it'll come up with your business. So think about it. What are your customers searching in your area and what keywords more specifically are they using? So you come up when they are doing a voice search. Right, and you do those on your website. You wanna make sure that the conversation that people are having with their phone is coming up on your website. So then Google says, okay, cool. This is the information that they need. I'll give it to them. And what a critical time. I mean, they're already in the buying decision, right? I'm not searching for a copy near me just for the heck of it. No, I'm ready for a cup of Joe and I'm ready to spend my money. So you wanna come up right now if you're in the Kirkland area. All right, now step number four is to really consider your online reputation. Just like a poor reputation can impact your search results, can also impact your voice search results. Now on Google by business, the bare minimum that you can be at is a four out of five star. If you wanna maintain that, of course, the closer you are to five, the better. And if you can't keep up with this because as we know, reputation management is a full-time job. There are services out there that you can definitely reach out to outsource. Just make sure that this stuff isn't just being ignored. I know just from my experience with GoDaddy Social, from managing Yelp and Google for local businesses, we've seen a lot of great results for voice search and search in general by just managing that online presence there and neutralizing the negative reviews, leveraging the positive reviews. All right, that brings us to step number five, train your staff for the shift. Make sure your account managers, everyone that's on board knows, hey, what is this about? What is this trend? What is voice search? And that goes doubly true for like freelancers or other people you hire to help you with your website and your business online. Make sure that they're up to speed too. All right, now step number six is to get found using plain and simple language. Now, when you're considering voice search, you really wanna consider the way that people talk. People don't talk super fancy like they do when they write on their keyboards or on their mobile phones. They talk a certain way. If they're trying to find a coffee shop, they're gonna go coffee shops my area, right? It's super simple and to the point. Very direct. When it comes to the written word, yeah, you're gonna see more flowery words and terminology, but when it comes to the cert, simple, straight to the point. All right, this leads us to our final step. Step number seven, keep your content relevant. So in other words, don't be general. Don't speak to a broader audience just because you think it's gonna bring in more business or talk more people. You actually can be a little exclusive with this. Be tailored, be relevant. Yeah, you wanna be specific. Like the old saying goes, you can't boil the ocean. So be super specific about what you're creating. All right, so those are our seven steps. I hope this really inspired you to really consider voice search for your business and your marketing strategy. If you liked this video and got a lot of value out it, go ahead and smash that like button. Add a comment below on what your favorite tip was. Also be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring that bell so you are the first to know about our next video as soon as it comes out. This is The Journey.