Hey Google, Find An Alarm Company Near Me

Voice search technology has become mainstream, with devices powered by Alexa, Siri, Cortana and Google Assistant becoming a staple in most homes and new vehicles sold. Security companies, alarm dealers in particular, need to embrace this reality quickly or risk losing potential customers to the competition.

When a consumer types a search on Google desktop or mobile, they will get many pages of results. But voice searches on mobile yield only the top result, and voice searches done through a car console will yield only 2-3 results. That means if your alarm company is not at the top of search engines, you’re not getting found on voice search.

The Target Audience of Alarm Companies Are Heavy Voice Search Users

As internet use has grown over the years, search engines have really become second nature to every demographic. While voice search in particular has been led by younger age groups, each generation is consistently using voice assistants more often. Back in 2014, Google found that teenagers were most likely to use voice search – more than half used it daily – while adults were also becoming regular users. Trends have changed drastically since then!

New research has found that affluent adults in the 35-44 age group are the largest users of voice search. The 25-34 age range reported they were most comfortable using voice search in public. As voice command technology becomes more prevalent, a wider demographic range will undoubtedly feel more comfortable using it on the move. These are your target customers.

Now is the time to act. Start with running our free online visibility report.

Our free report, including our Voice Readiness Score, will help you better understand how your business stacks up against the competition. Get Your Free Report Today>

How Accurate is Voice Search?

Voice recognition and language processing has led to rapid advances in voice search technology, so that the majority of searches are accurate. Tests examining performance found that Google Assistant was the best performing service on mobile devices.

Google Assistant answers correctly 95% of the time
Siri answers correctly about 85% of the time
Alexa and Cortana answer correctly about 80% of the time.

Today voice search is a viable alternative to a typed search, and over time accuracy will continue to improve. One of the reasons voice assistants have been so successful in recent years is because mobile usage has increased – but also because today’s consumer has changed! They want everything fast, easy and accurate. The search process is now more practical, easier, and faster than ever before, particularly for location-based queries.

Using voice assistants brings a new approach to queries. Look at this as being similar to the way Google users were conditioned to using the search field.

Voice search is particularly useful for getting quick answers, but the questions might be longer and more complex than the traditional text search – something to consider when optimizing content. But there’s good news for local businesses, as users are performing a high percentage of searches with local intent. As people become more accustomed to the technology, the potential for voice search to grow is quite clear.

Practical Steps to Optimizing Your Alarm Company for Voice Search

There are certain key ways that businesses can start optimizing their content to get found on voice search. Here’s a few:

Focus on Consistent Content Creation

Publishing new content on your company website and blog that contains relevant key phrases is essential. Not just your main keywords but the “long tail” keywords, meaning: lesser used phrases that represent natural language like you’d find in blog articles about practical life safety tips. Your blog should be written by professional content writers that have a focus keyword in mind, and know how to optimize your blog article correctly.

In addition, local geo-targeted pages are very effective at ranking well for various cities and towns in your service area like “Jonestown Home Security” or “Smithville Alarm Company”. A professional SEO company that specializes in the alarm industry can help you do this very affordably and effectively.

Use Natural Language

The process of finding and optimizing keywords is always evolving. It’s expected that voice search will keep the trend going, leading to adjustments as people typically use longer phrases when speaking. This change, however, leads to plenty of long-tail keyword opportunities for local businesses. Searches will be more focused on natural language, and will bring additional optimization opportunities for local businesses. In this regard, SEO expert Padraig O’Connor says that “marketers should ensure that their content is written in a language similar to the way people converse and search.”

Provide Direct Answers

Many of the queries asked with voice search are in the form of a question. To stand a good chance of ranking for these searches, it’s important to provide direct answers. Local businesses should provide clear answers wherever possible, with a focus on local and industry relevance.

Answer Questions in the First Sentence

Recent research found that the typical voice search result is only 29 words long, indicating a desire for quick and direct answers. This means that answering the question within the first sentence is essential, with any supporting content coming after the answer has been given. Of course, the surrounding content should be longer and more comprehensive, but individual questions benefit from being concise. According to reliable sources at HubSpot, “Google is likely taking a very similar approach to sourcing voice responses as it does to Featured Snippets.”

Create a FAQ Page

FAQs can also be a good fit for voice search, providing quick answers to common questions. Businesses can develop simple FAQ pages, adding new answers as required. Checking analytics data will often uncover queries that can be added to the page.

Optimize Your Content for “Near Me” Searches

Since 2012, Google Trends has shown year-on-year growth for “near me” related searches. Recently, the 2022 Internet Trends Report published by Mary Meeker while at Kleiner Perkins, showed that “near me” searches are up 900 percent from 2018, indicating that users are preferring local businesses.

Google believes that “near me” searches are more complex than ever before. Customers want things right, they want them now, and they want them as close to them as possible! They are not only looking for a local business, they’re also trying to find the nearest location that stocks a specific item at this exact moment – preferably one that is also highly-rated by previous customers.

Get Your Local Online Directory Listings Corrected Right Away

Google My Business is a vital part of a local online presence. So are Bing and Yelp. But simply claiming a business listing is not enough. Consistent use of the business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP) is indeed essential, but a completed profile will also include a detailed description, reviews, business hours, photos, and any relevant attributes. Each and every field available in the listing should be completed and thoroughly fleshed out.

In order to keep up with potential customers’ demands – and always ahead of the competition – real-time data syndication is essential. Details need to be accurate, with correct opening hours and consistent Name, Address & Phone Number (NAP).

Google My Business is only one platform among many that local businesses need to target. To ensure consistent local business details appear in Bing, Apple, Yelp, Foursquare, and any other online resource, information should be submitted to the data aggregators – Localeze, Acxiom, lnfogroup, and Factual. Aggregators have huge databases that search engines rely upon when providing users with local business details.

By providing detailed information to all the appropriate platforms, your alarm business gives itself the best chance of not only appearing in local search engines, but also becoming highly visible for relevant voice search queries.

There’s No Denying The Evidence

Everything points to voice search ruling consumer inquiries into the foreseeable future. Not only is it convenient and accessible to everyone, it’s also practical and easy to use. Any alarm company looking to get found online should already be working on an integrated SEO strategy to rank on the top position for voice searches.

The right strategy should include:

Voice search optimization
Citation and listing claiming, optimization, and maintenance
Content optimization

Start with Running Our Free Online Visibility Report

Our report, including our Voice Readiness Score, will help you better understand how your business stacks up against the competition. Get Your Free Report Today >

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