Long-time client Susan Idlet at Adventure Subaru gave us a shout the other day when she found that Siri, her iPhone assistant, didn’t offer her company at the top of the results for Subarus. Google does, and she figured Siri would just be reporting what Google had to say, so why wasn’t her company at the top for Siri?
It turns out that Siri doesn’t actually just read you the top listings at Google. She has her own methods.
So how can your local business get some love from Siri?
- Have a mobile-friendly website. Just like Google, Siri has to give good service if she wants to keep her market share. She doesn’t want to offer people a bad experience. If your mobile site shows a teensy weensy version of your website or a broken one, you should not expect high rankings with Siri. Adventure Subaru doesn’t have this problem.
- Rate well at Yelp. Experiments reported here and there around the web have led to the conclusion that Siri takes Yelp very seriously. Adventure Subaru, in spite of having fantastic reviews all around the web, has a lackluster showing at Yelp. Asking some happy customers to share their thoughts at Yelp could be worth doing.
- Optimize for local. Your website may be excellent, but if you haven’t done your local linkbuilding, you may still not come up for Siri. Siri uses Google and Yelp, but she also gets data from other local directories and review sites. Make sure your information is complete and consistent across all local sites. Adventure Subaru moved a year or two ago, and they’re still working on getting all their listings consistent. This is something that will probably help with Siri.
Siri isn’t going to be your top source of traffic any time soon — estimates say that only about 11% of people who have access to Siri even use the service. Those who do, though, tend to do what she says. Since you can follow the tips above without doing any harm to your position wit Google (in fact, these are all positive things for overall SEO), you might as well go ahead and see to it.
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