How ready are businesses for voice search by Kimberly Collins and VOICE SEARCH: The Definitive Guide by Brian Dean #453

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, one of the owners of E-Web Results. My name is Matt Bertram, another one of the owners of E-Web Results. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. If you're watching this podcast, you might have noticed that there's something a little different. You know what it is? Matt and I, we switched positions. Yeah, that's it. He was on the left, and then I was on the right, and then now we're... Wait, we're also seated. We're seated as well. So we're seated, we're in white leather chairs. And there, where's the TV screen? There's no TV screen behind us. There's a brick wall, and then a wall. There's a fake plant. It is a fake plant. We're in our new location! Woo! Yeah, we are excited that we're in our new location. It's been a long process, a long time coming. I don't even know when the first time we mentioned it on the podcast was. It was a long time ago, and the team's excited and growing. Construction always takes longer. It always takes longer than planned on. So, we're so excited you have joined us here at this new location. If you... What's the address, Chris? I don't... I'm waiting for the end. Didn't you need the address? The address. I don't... I get it. I'm going to still say that we were filmed at the other location, because that will continue to be an eWebResults location. Well, we weren't filmed there. That's just another location. Don't give it away. If you've... If this is your first podcast, you don't know what we're about to do, because we don't either. We're making this... This is a new format. All up. Well, we are broadcasting live in Houston, Texas. And Matt and I, we are your... Results Rebels! I don't have a review today, so we're going to ask you, because each week we have a contest, and that contest works this way. If we get a review and

we get 10 Shikos... A share, a like, and a follow. By the way, when you share, or you like us, or you follow us, you should hear in your head, you should hear... Shikow! Because that's the noise that you... That it makes. If we get 10 Shikos and we get a review, then we kind of push the process of telling you how to connect with us and all that to the end of the podcast. Today, we don't have a review, so we're just going to tell you, you can leave us a review by going to eWebResults.com slash... G+. G+. Yeah. I thought we were going to do all of them. Oh, we're going to... Oh, you want to do all of them? So, you can also connect with us... I'm just saying, I'm just having a good time here. And leave a review for us on Facebook. Facebook.com slash... EWebResults. Yes. Twitter.com slash... EWebResults. Instagram.com slash... EWebResults. And then there's LinkedIn, which is actually... Like YouTube, it's different. It's EWebResults forward slash YouTube, right? Oh, yes. Wow. You have a good memory because we haven't done this in a while. Connect with us on YouTube, which is, by the way, where you would actually be able to watch this podcast. Hello, you can see us. If you're on YouTube, share and follow and subscribe and all that good stuff. That's going to be EWebResults.com slash... And we should, like, turn the camera around and face our new full-time videographer, Ivan. Ivan! Or Ivan. Depends on who you're talking to. By the way, when I call him Ivan around the office, everyone's like, is that a new employee? No, it's Ivan. It's the same Ivan. Oh, look. We can see ourselves. This is awesome. That is pretty cool. All right, so, yeah, EWebResults.com slash G+, and you can leave us a review. And, yes, we're still using G+, even though G+, is, like, going... Yeah. Bye-bye. So, we might change that, but I like... G+, is easy, so... Yeah, I don't think we're going to get

much easier. We're still going to be like, Google my business. Please go to GMB. Yeah. So, we're not going to do that. Hey, if this is the first podcast you're listening to... We're sorry. Howdy. We're sorry. Welcome. Howdy. Hey, we're going to get into the meat of the podcast soon. This is called The Potatoes of the Podcast. If you've listened to this podcast before, then we're happy you're back, right? I've already talked about... Yeah, well, we've had to kind of sporadically do these over the last few weeks, so they've been a little spread out. We're going to try to get them a little more consistent. Yeah. We're also going to be really ramping up the content. Really, 80% of all searches next year are going to be video searches. Video! Yeah. So, we're going to be producing a lot of videos. That's why we hired two people. So, you might have been missing us for a while. We missed you, too. And we've missed you, too. Yeah. But we're back, and we're going to be around more. It is that simple. Hey, if you're interested... Look, I'm wearing a lovely shirt here. You can see in the picture. It's the SEO results. What does PTIF stand for, Chris, for new podcast listeners? Punch in the face! And it's a good thing. I wouldn't even know what episode you'd have to go back to in order to find out the first reference to punch in the face. A punch in the face is a very good thing. If you'd like a t-shirt like mine or like Matt's, you can get that t-shirt by going to ewebresults.com slash... Swag! Swag! Swag! There you go. I knew that! I was like... I was getting t-shirts. You looked like a deer in a headlight just one second. But then I knew who it was. You came right back. I just needed one second. All right. So, we are actually going to talk about an article today. How ready are businesses for voice search, right? Yes. Because everyone's talking about

voice search. Voice search is clearly important. We know you have done a voice search. Well, almost all of you have done a voice search. 50% of people. 50% of people have not done a voice search? No. Have done a daily voice search. A daily voice search, right. I think almost everyone... I think even my mom has tried a voice search before. So, yeah. I think everybody's done that. So, we're going to jump into that article. That article is by Kimberly Collins. Punch in the face to you, Kimberly Collins. Have I missed anything from the beginning? Does it feel like... I feel like we covered everything that we need to do. We covered what we wanted to cover. In the potatoes of the podcast. So, if we didn't cover anything, we'll cover it next time. We'll cover it next time. Yeah. This is the meat of the podcast. Yes, the meat of the podcast. Kimberly Collins is providing the meat of the podcast. Punch in the face to you, Kimberly. And again, the study. How ready are businesses for voice search? So, this is interesting. I told Matt when I chose this article that I kind of hate this article and I kind of love this article because it kind of proves something that I've been thinking in the back of my head for a long time, right. So, people are like, oh, voice search. Voice search. Got to get ready. Are you ready for voice search? Hey, you. Are you? You got to be ready for voice search. Be ready for voice search. And in my head, I'm like, the voice search isn't that much different than when people do a search. Yes, there's some linguistic differences. We all know that Google has the capability of translating those linguistic differences to the standard kind of search that you would do. And so, here's an article. It says, is your business ready for voice search? And if any of you are former podcast listeners, which we know there's a lot of you out there, know Chris

has a disdain for voice search and that I have a little bit different opinion about voice search, which we might get into. Okay, so let's be very specific here. I love voice search. I use voice search regularly. It's how I like prove things to my children who do not believe me when I'm saying stuff. Like you're a ninja. Like I'm a ninja. We had to pull up the definition of a ninja to actually prove that one. It's just the thought process and how important and how different voice search actually is. So, there's a nuance there. And I think on that, we would probably disagree a little bit. That adds value to, you know, if we thought exactly the same about everything, then one of us should leave. Yeah, I mean, there's no point. All right, so how ready are businesses for voice search? And they actually analyzed 73,000 businesses. That's a good- That's a good size study. I would agree. And it was across different kind of sizes of business, small to medium size business, mid-market businesses, and then enterprise businesses. So, really good segments of the business. And this is what they looked at. They looked at a number of factors, including accuracy of address, business hours, phone number, name, website, and zip code, as well as accuracy across various voice search directories. So, if you've done search engine optimization for very long- Sounds a lot like NAP listings. Yeah, it sounds kind of like NAP, right? It's got the name, address, and phone number. Phone number, website. NAP, blah. And then at different directories. That feels- One NAP. Exactly the same. So, this is kind of my point. One NAP-O. One NAP-O. That's what we should call it. Website, name, address, phone number, opening hours. I like it. One NAP-O. One NAP-O. Done. New acronym. Add that to our glossary. One NAP-O. So, this is my point. As they're kind of assessing whether businesses are ready for voice search, what they're doing is seeing if their NAP is actually- One NAP-O is actually

accurate. So, let's dive into this. Are your businesses ready for voice search? Over 96% of all business locations fail to list their business information correctly. This is exactly like we've been saying about NAP, and we call it just SEO local. One NAP-O. One NAP-O. Thank you. You're going to have to correct me one more time on that, and then I'm going to give up. Or maybe you'll give up. So, more than 90- No. No. Good. More than 90%- I just branded a new word. Do you need a little TM reference to Matt Bertram on that? That's a Wikipedia reference right there. In other words, more than 96% of all business locations fail to list their business information correctly. We have always talked about WNAP-O, and where you have to have your name, your business address, and your phone number have to be exactly the same. And when we say exactly the same, do you have an example of how exactly the same it has to be? Well, if you have street spelled out, you have ST, you don't have it there, apartment, suite, if you have a pound sign in front of the suite, that's one of the good things. We're like the whole fifth floor, so I don't know if we really have a suite. Yeah. Well, we have multiple suites. We actually have multiple suites, yeah. So, exactly. Yeah. If it's got a pound sign in one of your listings, and it doesn't have a pound sign in another listing, the survey says, that one fails. Or, you know, if you have the LLC after your name, like, everything needs to be consistent because Google is looking for consistency, and why are they looking at it? Because they can trust, if that says it this way, this is likely that thing. So, Google, that's one of the kind of factors that it looks at is, you know, and that's why I like to use one, like images, I know, kind of a little side note, I like to use GPS coordinates because what

is more, like, this is accurate than GPS coordinates. So, from an accuracy standpoint, that's what Google likes to see. I don't know, sometime when I'm using Waze or even Google Maps, it feels like the GPS coordinates are a little bit off. I mean, I've seen that, too. Yeah. It's a little crazy. I just moved to, like, a new... Office? Well, no, well, that, too. Yeah, I've been out of pocket, guys. I've been, yeah, the last two weeks, moved personally, moved professionally, but moved to a new development, and the street's not on Google yet, so I'm working with the builder to get us, like, so you can actually find us. Well, that's kind of important, and you know, you can use, I don't know if you use Waze, Waze will actually allow you to construct roads. It's kind of cool. Yeah. As a... I actually, when I was out in California, everybody uses Waze. Yeah. No one, like, looks at anything else. I am old school, and I'm still using Apple Maps. Oh, Apple Maps. Yeah. Right. I like Apple Maps. You suffer... Didn't you suffer, like, when Apple switched off of Google or something, and then it was, like, ludicrously bad or something? Yeah. Yeah. I'm... It's like... Like, I don't have, like, a Crackberry, but... Yeah. If I could, I would. All right. So, the more... The four most common types of listing errors, right? So, this is just kind of interesting, because there's a total that they mentioned they were searching for of one, two, three, four, five, six pieces of information, and they're only giving the four most common types of errors. One was opening hours. Next was website. Next was location. Next was street map. By the way, probably the way they researched this article was to go to one of those, you know, SEO local applications, and type in all these businesses in the SEO applications. Well, I just... I feel like this study is really relevant, but it was pretty easy to execute. Yeah. Right? You could even go

scrape a bunch of those. And so, you know, I feel like we need to have some eWeb case studies coming out shortly here. Yeah. We have the capabilities to do that now, so... I think that's a good idea. I think... And just to be clear, I'm not, like, poo-pooing the person who wrote this article and the information they put together. It's the whole kind of excitement about voice search and how different it is. Well, I mean, some of the things that this article did talk about that I thought was quite interesting was dentists, health foods, home improvement, criminal attorneys, okay, and dollar stores were the absolute most correct addresses. Most accurate, yeah. But then, you know, business attorneys, so also attorney, but a business attorney, not accurate. Customer production organizations, not accurate. Interesting. I mean, congressional representatives, not unheard of that they don't want you to find them. Art galleries, and then wedding services. You would think that wedding services, you would want to know where you're looking. Well, it depends on the service. Yeah. Probably depends on the service. Well, a lot of them come to you, maybe. If you think about a photographer or a DJ, most of them are probably... Out of their house or something like that, yeah. Right, it may not be... So that kind of makes sense. If it said wedding venues... Congressional representatives, explain that one. You did. They don't want you to find them, to physically find them. They just want you to vote for them. That's all they're looking for. So, yeah, that's good. So, I mean, this study, I actually read this study somewhere else. Voice will be 50% of all surges by 2020. So, we've got voice and video, right? Yeah, voice and... Well, videos, well, okay, those statistics, I guess, would compete and come from different areas, I guess, how you look at it. Yeah. But really, there's a whole new swath of searches, right? So, are we talking about tech searches? Right. Or are we talking about... Voice. So, Google, here's something

crazy. So, Backlinko has like a whole, like, what is it called? It's called a definitive guide on voice search, right? And he talks about Google not being a search engine, but an answer engine, right? Okay, yeah. Because you're not searching for it, you're just asking Google for an answer. Yeah, yeah. And so, it's really changed how people are doing searches, right? So, you got, you know, faster searches, faster answers. It's more convenient. And like, really, how has it changed? Well, the searches are becoming more like we use the word long tail. So, searches are becoming more conversational, as you kind of briefly touched on. I feel like you have a different... I'm cheating on your sheet. You have a different article than me. I had supplement articles. I feel like this is not fair. I'm glad we're adding value. And I'm like, I don't have that. So, here's a fact. All right. You know, the growth in Near Me Now searches has gone up by over 150% over the last two years. Yeah. Here's some other interesting statistics. Yeah. But really, I thought it would be good to add... By the way, he just handed me all the statistics that he just mentioned. No, I did not. No, those are new statistics. See, there's a lot of people listening here that didn't know that I just tried to help you out. I circled the data points. That I would agree. Yeah. Here's one. 65% of Google Home and Amazon Echo owners can't imagine going back. Isn't that? Like, isn't that interesting? So, I'm going to add an interesting statistic. I'm going to say that 60% of my Amazon questions are, what's the weather like? Because my son asked in the morning. My daughter asked in the morning. My wife asked in the morning. And I probably asked twice because I'm like, what's the first weather now? And then, oh, wait, I didn't really pay attention to the temperature later in the day. So, then I ask again. Well, you've seen like Alexa and the dot

being on and like picking up some like crazy things. Like, so, you know, this technology is here. Yeah. Okay. It's not going anywhere. And really the thing about voice search, why voice search is so important, right? And this is kind of a little bit of antithesis to what you're talking about. Right. You know, map listings. So, the Google local listings are really, there's a bright local study and it's really cannibalizing organic search. Right. Well, you know, where are the opportunities? Okay, maps, huge opportunity in maps. So, there's three choices, right? Like the three pack or a snack pack or whatever. Yep. Okay. Well, in voice search, how many searches are you getting? One. One. Okay. So, you really need to be that business if you're surrounded by 10 other tire companies or pizza companies or restaurants or, you know, if they're looking for you the closest or nearby or all those searches and really how the search has changed, which I think is super interesting. For example, let me see if I can find it. I might have handed it to you. But, for example, people, the natural language searching. Yeah. You know, you would type to make homebrew at home, make cold brew. Okay. Right? That's what you would type. Well, now you type, hey, Google, how do you make cold brew at home? Question mark. Right. Right? So, it is optimizing for- It's different, right? It is a little bit different. So, really, we've started to optimize for near me, nearby, you know, the different locations. Really, one of the terms that I haven't optimized for yet is like, hey, Google. Right. Because, you know, how the algorithm works, and they're going to maybe put different weightings on these different things, but right now, Google's looking at the words you search for and trying to give you the best answers for that. So, when you optimize for location or you optimize for the term or the theme that you're ranking for, you've got to take that into consideration. Yeah. And I know we've

got another call here coming up, so I know we need to wrap up. Yeah. But I just, I kind of, you know, when we talk about voice search, we talk about how it's either important or not important, but how, but I wanted to explain like why it's changing and where it's going and that sort of thing. I think there's a couple of things. So, so you, and I've heard you mentioned this before and it's, and it's very true that there's one result. Now that's on, on a, on a Google home device. That's on Alexa, Alexa device, even asking Siri. Um, it, and, and I think when you're talking about search, when they answer that one question, right? So if it's a home device, whether it's Alexa or Google home, there is no credit. Think about that, right? So if the one, even if the one answer is provided by you, and by the way, in my opinion, Google does a much, much better job of giving you one answer. There are, there, Alexa doesn't know Alexa's kind of dumb relative to Google in the sense of answering kind of abstract questions. My mom's friend was the designer on that, but thank you. Yeah. Um, does she watch the podcast? Why not? We can go back and forth. So, um, so yeah, when you're talking about answering questions, if it answers it verbally, it gives no one credit. So that's one thing to keep in consideration. Well, you can tie in your name, right? Yeah. Your brand name into your answer. Yes. So that's something to think about. I like that. I like that. Um, and it's also different on a, on a phone. So if you're asking, you know, Hey Google, and you ask a question, you get the one answer often, and then you can, then you're on a search result page, right? I think it's the same with Siri. Well, so the knowledge graph, the answers. No. That was not planned. My phone was just trying to answer that question. On the knowledge

graph, um, the searches on the knowledge graph have dropped and they do at least give a citation. Right. Of, uh, you know, who, who came up with that answer. So, I mean, I think the bottom line here, cause I know we're trying to wrap up is that everything is continuously changing and you really want to stay on top of those changes. So you need to be listening to this podcast. Yeah. Cause we keep, we bring you the latest and greatest information. Yeah. Even, even if it's not necessary, like doing different searches for voice search. All right. So that is wrapping up our podcast. Uh, clearly from the, the, the, from what we discussed going back and forth, there's a lot of value in understanding voice search and keeping, uh, moving in that direction and, and adjusting your optimization practices. Right. Yeah. I think that's clear. Uh, I also think that the most important thing, and we'll continue to say this, have always said this in terms of SEO step one, SEO local nap listing. So when Napa, when Napa, when Napa, when Napa listings, uh, that's step one. So, uh, well, I, I think, I think even goes back to something that you say all the time is that, uh, the, you gotta think about the end user and providing value for the person that's searching because that's why, what Google is about is giving the best possible answer, uh, to keep those people continuing to use Google and keep coming back so they can eventually charge. Yep. Okay. And so, uh, but there's always going to be a place for organic. Um, you know, you hear SEO dies, you know, all the time, um, link bait, right, but it's always going to change. And so you just really need to stay, stay on top of it and know what's, what's happening. There's a lot you can do, uh, with your local listings with maps. We've been testing out a bunch of different things, um, that are working really, really effectively. It's actually a different

search engine. So you've got universal search that wraps, um, you know, organic search. It's pulled in YouTube and all the videos, um, you know, you got the shopping ads and so really universal search, but that search engine is something different. If you haven't yet, you should log into your Google, my business listing cause hopefully all you out there have already set that up. Yeah. And really take a look at the insight section, uh, inside your Google, my business and look at it. It's like your own Google analytics for your maps. Yeah. There might be some things in there you see of things you can do. You want to maximize, uh, all your pictures, videos. You want to categorize and tag them correctly, um, make sure they're labeled properly. You want to fill out all your services, um, there you can add little blogs in there. You can actually build a little website, uh, leave a little teaser for later, but, um, you know, we've been doing some really cool stuff, uh, with that website. I get a debate, uh, from a lot of different SEOs of, you know, does that affect your rankings? And, and I have some definitive data on that, but, um, that I'll share, but yeah. So just know that things are changing. You need to stay with what's new. And if Google offers a new service, um, like check it out because it usually be free and then, you know, you'll have to pay for it. I mean, same thing with like Facebook live, Facebook live, the algorithm was tweaked to really show it on some of these other social media platforms, uh, like Instagram TV. There's a lot that you want to do to kind of ride that wave and stay in front of it. And, uh, we can keep you up to date on what that is. Excellent. So make sure you subscribe and follow, uh, or Chacow us. If you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, call EOF results for

increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. That hasn't changed. If you've got a referral for, you know, our location has, the background has, we're seated. We, you could still find Chris and a few others, uh, stragglers back at the old location. Got another business there that, uh, took over that spot. Yes. Uh, they kind of took it over instantly. Um, there was a chalkboard behind the coffee maker on the day we moved out. Oh yeah. It was just, we're like, we're putting our own stuff. Yeah. It was pretty well. The coffee maker improved. I just feel like if you have a referral, that's anybody who's interested in any aspect of internet marketing, you send them to us, they pay their bill. We pay you or donate to charity. That's an ongoing month over month service, uh, where, where we've got, uh, referral partners or generating revenue month over month. So that, so that you can do that with us. Um, we were filmed live here at some, do you know the address here? I don't know. It's like one, three, one, five. It's one Oh five, 11, one Oh five, 13, one of, I think it's 13, one Oh five. That's what I'm going to go with Northwest freeway suite 500, uh, Houston, Texas, seven, seven, zero, four, zero. I do know that piece. Um, and we're going to have a grand opening is a May 13th. Yes. May 13th is a June, June, June, June 13th, June 13th, whatever's a Thursday, the maze of Monday. Yeah. So June 13th, we're actually going to have a grand opening for all you out there that listen to the podcast. If you're come by, come by, we're going to have a party. We're going to send out invitations. If you're interested, message us. Uh, we have 30,000 square feet, so we're not going to run out of room. We'll figure out what the festivities will be, food, drank, music, whatever, uh, but it's going to, it's going to be great. So if you're interested,

reach out to us on our Facebook page, let us know, and we'll give you the details. Yeah, absolutely. Well, uh, this has been another amazing podcast. Uh, you guys have made us the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. Uh, you can get transcript video or audio of this podcast at our website, ewebresults.com. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. My name is Matt Bertrand. Bye-bye for now.