Good morning guys I want to talk to you really quickly about something that happened this week, actually happened yesterday morning. The iPhone 4S was officially released and the reason I wanted to speak to you about it is because it has a important new feature that is doomed effect, search, * for all of my clients, it is going to effect it for anybody who has a business online who is providing the service locally and the feature is Siri. I don’t know if you have heard about it or not. Siri is basically a digital voice assistant on the iPhone 4S. We can actually push a button and speak directly to your phone in any way you want to do. Not only does it set reminders and check your email and read your text messages and all that, you can actually ask it to tell you the best landscaper in Dallas,
the best service Cincinnati, the best restaurant in your local area, whatever, you can ask it that and it going to deliver a categorized, it is going to deliver a list of Yelp results that are ordered by your ratings and that is really important. Yelp has paid a lot of money to be featured on the phone and even though it is very silvery new you are not going to see a lot of traffic from the internet or probably get a lot of new customers from it. It is something that you need to be aware of and it is something that we are addressing with a lot of our clients. It is something that we have already addressed because we do recommend that all of our clients have yelp pages and addresses and get reviews for them and pay attention to reviews that are being listed. And now if you , if you do a search on Siri and pull up a Los Angeles landscaper, you are going to get a list of about twenty landscapers in the Los Angeles area and if you look at this list probably the, about the top three even have a single review. So there is an opportunity here if you are aggressive to really give reviews on Yelp page, make sure they are good reviews and get to the top of this list. You are not, I guess initially you are not getting a lot traffic but this important because this signifies where the direction map is going. You are going to continue to see this rope. Siri, the, this product isn’t going to say, just as simple as it currently is, it is going to grow. You are going to see in graded into all of the Apple devices whether it is laptops, whether it is iPads, voice in speaking to your device, to your computer, especially a mobile device or any of your location based devices, this is going to be really important. You are going to see Android follow soon, Samsung, Google, they are going to really beef up their Google voice in their voice applications. So it is important. This going to become a * feature and something that is going to become the norm and so it is something that you would be aware. So currently Siri, it is going from a couple of databases, it is pulling from Yelp obviously as we have already mentioned, city grade which populates city search which is, I never looked the search engine that we recommend our clients to use. Yelp, * and a couple of other databases that are specific to restaurant reviews and different things like that so that is calling from a couple of different sources but overall it is using Yelp for the majority of its service searches and for a lot of the restaurant reviews as well but it is, it is definitely pulling data from a couple of different sources* but so I just want to make you aware of that and I think it is very important that you focus on your Yelp pages. One of the strategies in recommendations that we always make is be diverse with your marketing, especially online. Don’t just rely on one source to get new clients, don’t just rely on your service * don’t just rely on one website, don’t just rely on Yelp, you need to have a diverse pipe line of getting new leads to your website and calling you on the phone so continue to use Yelp and I would in fact say, strengthen your Yelp page, get better reviews, actively ask you customers to leave you reviews and, and pay attention to these things. It is only going to become more and more important so if you, the soon as you start the better the outcome is going to be and the better, the better it is going to be for you in the long term so just wanted to let you guys know that and good luck, keep working.
Important Takeaways:
- Siri doesn’t use Google results, but similar Android-based tools obviously will. And Google will certainly adapt to changing user behaviors.
- Your current SEO strategies will have to adapt and change as well. For example, Siri and similar apps to come: Will often bypass search altogether. Ask Siri to “find the closest Italian restaurant” and the result is based on your current location and data from Yelp. Clawing your SEO way to the top spot on Google for “Philadelphia Italian restaurant” won’t matter.
- Will place added emphasis on local. As a result, savvy small businesses that don’t rely on e-commerce will spend even more time optimizing listings on Foursquare, Yelp, Facebook Places, etc. For example, Yelp recommendations are currently embedded in Siri responses, so Yelp optimization matters more than SEO.
- Will make PPC irrelevant. Without a search engine involved, there is no PPC. If you rely heavily on PPC campaigns to drive traffic, your total ad serves could steadily decline.
- May change the social media marketing landscape. Say you own a bed and breakfast. Your inn has a number of great reviews on TripAdvisor, partly because you offer incentives to guests who post a review. That’s awesome… but what if the (eventual) Android version of Siri only includes results from TravelPost? If that happens, a major chunk of social media marketing disappears.
What should you do?
If you run a small business, keep working to improve SEO results on major search engines but spend the majority of your time focused on optimizing listings on Google Places, Yelp, Foursquare, Epinions… because more and more, your customers won’t be hanging out on search engines.
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