The Importance of Local Search:

While most in the tech industry have been watching the battle go on between Google and Facebook, Google launching Plus and Facebook Photo Credit  planetc1talking about beginning a search engine of their own, under the radar comes Siri with possibly a huge advantage with local search.  Can Siri and Yelp change the scope of local search SEO?  Yes, if you’re a small locally owned business it’s worth taking the time and effort to work on getting some yelp reviews.

Working with small locally owned businesses I’ve blogged before about the importance of reviews and local SEO search, but this is a game changer for local media search.  This isn’t going to happen overnight, but for the local business owner who will benefit from local searches you had might as well start now, this is why.

In the first quarter of 2012 over 1.5 million iPhones were sold.  This generation of the iPhone comes with your own personal assistant Siri.  The amount of iPhone sales is only going to grow and everyday more and more people are going to have Siri as a personal assistant.  So just how does Siri work with a local search?

How Siri Will Change Local Search

Siri/Apple have partnered with yelp to generate her response to local search requests.  If you were to ask Siri for Mexican Restaurants in Portland Oregon, Siri is going to draw from Yelp reviews with her answer.  So if you want Siri to recommend your business when an iPhone user asks her for relevant suggestions, you’re going to need to focus your priorities on directories and especially reviews on yelp. This is because Siri is going to make recommendations based on a user’s location, and Apple believes that Yelp gives them the most qualified information that is not owned by Google or Facebook.

For a local business and local search what does this mean?  Simply put, businesses will have to strengthen their local presence in Yelp. They will also have to make their websites more mobile-friendly. Additionally, businesses will have to incorporate keywords into their websites that reflect spoken as well as written queries.

As always if you have any questions about how to plan and strategize for this change in local search please contact us we’d be happy to answer any questions about this.

 

About the Author:

Mike Frey

Before co-founding Paradux Media Group, Mike spent more than 15 years in the world of marketing and advertising. While working with hundreds of locally owned businesses, he developed an appreciation for minimizing clients’ dollars while maximizing tangible results for those clients.

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35 Comments

  1. Sugeet on May 1, 2012 at 9:38 am

    It seems to me that the world does not yet realize that between the iPad and Siri, Steve Jobs has changed computing forever. These two items are the future of our interface with the technology and the effect will be profound. I really appreciate this column!

  2. Kate Brown Wilson on May 2, 2012 at 9:49 pm

    Hello there I never knew about this before even though I work as an SEO, this is very useful specially for me, because I am new to this kind of activity.

  3. Born27 on May 3, 2012 at 6:12 am

    I love your post. Very knowledgeable and useful. I hope many could read about this. With this post, businessmen/women would be aware and they’ll know some useful tips to make their business to gain in progress.

  4. Heidi19 on May 7, 2012 at 7:26 am

    Great post! providing us this useful information is really a big help. I will surely check this to see what SIRI can offer us. Thanks and i’m looking forward to read more from you.

  5. Scottsdale on May 20, 2012 at 4:03 am

    Really good article, I learned so much from this about SEO, thank you! This area of SEO is getting complicated every day, and these artivles can help me to get this knowledge every time I need it.

  6. Bethany on May 22, 2012 at 5:36 am

    this new marketing tool is indeed great for a lot of local businesses. Relying on putting up an ad in the yellow pages or in classified section of a newspaper is no longer that effective like before.

    • Rainbowseo.com on December 27, 2012 at 7:48 am

      I agree with Bethany that relying on websites like the Yellow Pages isn’t effective anymore. The younger generation relies on the internet and as the population ages that number will only increase.

  7. Eman Chavez on May 28, 2012 at 9:04 pm

    Siri will change the whole point of local search engines. Pacing google and facebook out. And SEO will definitely part of siri. Steve Jobs has started the new way of easy searching.

  8. Social media management on September 3, 2012 at 3:09 am

    When it comes in Local search the most common search engine tools that use are Google, Bing and Yahoo. And on that case, websites want to get top ranking in search engines. To easily find by customers and visitors.

  9. Peter on November 13, 2012 at 4:32 am

    Great informative post, I am happy to read it. I think really it is excellent post, waiting for the next post soon. Thanks for sharing me.

  10. Scott Sholtes on November 20, 2012 at 9:25 am

    Great article! I recently read that Yelp has partnered with Bing on local search? Is this true, and how will it affect Siri, if at all? This is a very interesting article about how Siri may be overlooked, and how the power of review sites like Yelp continues to grow.

  11. Jeremy Cissell on December 30, 2012 at 9:54 pm

    Local Search is what 90% of my customers need. Specifically targeting in most cases just a hand full of city names with the niche keywords, and long tails.
    Google+, Authorrank, and the new Local is making it alot easier for business owners to beat out there national competitors. Most of my clints can outrank their non local competitors within 60 days ….most of the time by the very next crawl.
    +

  12. Jean-Philippe Maltais on January 1, 2013 at 6:37 am

    The most important thing to gain in order to make your products and services dominate in your local area. Being on top of it will make your company prosper.

  13. Simon on January 16, 2013 at 4:50 am

    Good local post. Google’s development of local search over the last decade, and particularly since the venice update this year has sparked a whole new brand of SEO which gives small businesses a fighting chance. You go, Google.

  14. Bram de Haas on January 30, 2013 at 6:02 pm

    Thanks for the insightful analysis on Siri’s influence on local search in the future Mike. Appreciate it a lot. Not a huge fan of YELP so far but we’ll see how that all pans out. You are probably right though.

  15. yepi on March 18, 2013 at 7:39 pm

    I wanted to thank you for this excellent read!! i’m learnig about SEO

  16. off page services on March 18, 2013 at 8:57 pm

    SEO is always changing. Last year Google made 500 changes to their algorithm. What worked to increase a site”s ranking is different today than even six months ago! I was interested to see that there are now professional certificates for digital and social media.

  17. Trish on March 19, 2013 at 11:09 am

    I’ve recently created first website and to make local search presence very strong I needed to work SEO nicely. Therefore I’m practicing SEO works from my friend. This post is very excellent for Siri and Yelp SEO learning. I’ll definitely pay attention on Yelp reviews for better local search response. Thanks.

  18. WebsiteMBA on March 21, 2013 at 2:27 am

    Awesome and very helpful post! Siri is surely taking over the local SEO. Also S-Voice is still coming hot. You should start working with increasing your presence on Yelp guys!

  19. tuyetdenbatngo.vn on March 25, 2013 at 3:20 am

    I wanted to thank you for this excellent read!! i’m learnig about SEO

  20. peterroze on March 30, 2013 at 3:23 am

    Really this is very good software, i used that it shows and providing the very good results to me, for which i need to want. The mac is very good operating system from apple.

  21. Game Trainers on March 30, 2013 at 4:31 am

    Siri has taken a good initiative to improve local searches.

  22. Warren Gregory on April 19, 2013 at 2:19 am

    Nice information! There is amazing about “Local Search SEO and Siri”. I am impressed by the quality of information on this website. There are a lot of good resources here. I am sure I will visit this place again soon. I start my internet journey with it .

  23. olivia158 on May 4, 2013 at 10:02 am

    Its a nice post. At first I want to say thank you for sharing with us this kind of tremendous posting. Its my personal opinion that, Buying is much more effective than rent because then we have the freedom to do anything for next.

  24. denver seo on May 6, 2013 at 1:50 pm

    is siri a new web2.0. i have not heard about this before. anyway i learned a new tips from you

    thank u buddy

  25. Davidcook on May 9, 2013 at 9:43 am

    Thanks for sharing this information. This is new information gathered and it would be great to visit this blog . WEB 2.0 alwyas helps to increase the traffic. I am looking for more SEO tips from this blog .

  26. nghiatranghanoi on May 13, 2013 at 2:33 am

    Thanks for sharing this information. This is new information gathered and it would be great to visit this blog . WEB 2.0 alwyas helps to increase the traffic. I am looking for more SEO tips from this blog

  27. web marketing durham on June 12, 2013 at 10:47 pm

    I really like the post about the web marketing. Internet marketing tools are being utilized by thousands of websites on hundreds of PPC search engines. Internet Marketing Tools are essential for building any business, any affiliate or network marketing program, online or offline.

  28. Madan Gehlot on June 13, 2013 at 9:20 am

    Local SEO is changing the pattern of online business. Great step taken by Siri

  29. Ryan on June 14, 2013 at 3:27 pm

    Great article. Amazing what’s happening in SEO now with mobile on the rise. So many tricks I’m finding to help rankings – even just searching for a business with Siri or google maps and using it to go there seems to have an effect on local seo as well.
    Ryan

  30. Lalita Bisht on June 15, 2013 at 3:29 am

    Hey there! This is a good read. I will be looking forward to visit your page again and for your other posts as well. Thank you for sharing this valuable information about Siri. I am glad to stop by your site.

  31. ASHLEY811 on June 29, 2013 at 1:44 am

    Informative posting! I think this posting would be effective for all. Thank you for sharing with us. invites you to read

  32. John Johnson on July 20, 2013 at 3:27 am

    I came to know about SIRI today through this blog post. Great to know about it. So, I think it became more important to gather some good reviews at yelp to do well at SIRI to boost my local search ranking. 🙂

  33. aziz on July 20, 2013 at 11:10 am

    nice article,well written and composed,very useful and informative one,your tips about SEO and Siri are very unique.I get knowledge from it.Thank for sharing.Great job.

  34. Digital Junkies on January 13, 2019 at 10:09 pm

    Such a wonderful article you have shared. Thank you for sharing informative article for us.

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