Navigating the Era of Smart Assistants: Church Voice Search SEO Strategies

[00:00:00] Speaker A: While my kids make fun of me for doing it, more and more people are actually using voice search to find what they're looking for online. But a lot of churches don't really put much thought into voice search. And in this conversation, we're gonna unpack what your church can do to show up and reach people when they search for you on their phone using just their voice. Let's do this. You're listening to the reach, right? Podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow. Well, hey, guys, I'm Thomas. [00:00:35] Speaker B: And I'm Ian. [00:00:36] Speaker A: And today we are talking about voice search optimization for churches. In the era of smart assistants and people talking to their phones, it's becoming more and more obvious that optimizing not just for typed in searches or texted in searches, but actually optimizing for voice searching is actually kind of a new skillset within search. Search engine optimization that I think churches need to be taking a look at. And something we want to discuss today. So should be a good conversation. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. And maybe one that, you know, isn't top of mind to everyone, but something that is on the rise and something to definitely help churches engage more visitors, which is, again, what all of us are. [00:01:23] Speaker A: We've done dozens of episodes over the years. You know, you do 200 and you're, you know, one of our main things we talk about here is search engine optimization, things that churches can do to reach more people. And this isn't. I wouldn't put it as like, a different category. It's still all of the same principles apply to search engine optimization that we, we already do for written searches, that we would also do for voice searches. But there are a few tweaks that we are kind of seeing coming. I think, when it comes to how you can optimize your search performance for the rise of people doing more and more searches this way. So there's two big things that are shifting in the search engine optimization world right now. I think this is one that we've been aware of for a few years, and then the other enormous, like, Boulder that is hitting right now is AI and what role that's going to play in search engine optimization. There's some question mark as to whether people will be searching the same way that they are right now with AI being able to tell them a lot of the answers that people are looking for. So there's a lot of question marks out there. But I do think that more and more people are using voice search. I don't know. My kids, they make fun of me for voice searching, or even more, they make fun of me for voice texting, where I'll kind of speak to my phone to get it to text. Is that an old person thing, do you think, Ian? For me? Yeah. [00:02:46] Speaker B: My kids make fun. [00:02:47] Speaker A: What's that about? [00:02:48] Speaker B: They make fun of me as well for that. I don't voice search is my, as I voice text, I do voice text, and it's just faster for me. I'm just, that's what I tell them to. I'm like, you're making fun of me, but it's, it's fast and I just get it done. [00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm all about efficiency. It's a hack is what it is. So I don't know, it's something that us guys in our forties that we, I don't know, I think we're more likely to do it than my teenage children are, so. [00:03:12] Speaker B: Guess so. [00:03:13] Speaker A: But anyway, I think it is important and I think that it will only continue to rise, being able to interact with our devices in a seamless way, especially if I'm wearing AirPods or something like that, and can just kind of have that conversation immediately. It's actually really convenient in a lot of ways. So that brings us to this question of what do we need to do differently to show up on searches when people are doing voice search. So if someone is, you know, I guess, I suppose it could be kind of a standard search. Like, I don't think a lot of people are doing, like, churches near me as a voice search, but usually voice searches are going to be more targeted towards actual questions that people have. So we'll talk a little bit about that and what it looks like for us as churches. What kinds of questions are we going to be answering? But I think you and I, we came up with six different ideas that churches could implement, and I don't know, you want to kind of. Well, should we talk through them, Ian? [00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I know this, this is an area you've done a little more research on, and it's kind of in your, your area of expertise here. Thomas, I know you're passionate about voice searching. Kidding. But also, you did some good homework on it. [00:04:28] Speaker A: I don't know if I'd go that. [00:04:29] Speaker B: Far, but, yes, but I will definitely. Yeah. Let me ask you about some of these, because some of these were new news to me. But, yeah. We have six strategies for optimizing your church website specifically for voice search. So first one is natural language content. What do we, what do we have in mind when it comes to natural language content on your website. [00:04:53] Speaker A: So the idea behind this is that we have to realize that when people use voice search, they speak in a different way than what they would type into a search engine. So it's much more often that people are, like we said, they're asking questions than they are putting in just a statement to do research. People don't usually do voice typing for research. They do it more to get quick answers for things. So you want to make sure that you are using natural language, the way that people talk and, and not more formal language that you would maybe do in blog posts and things. And even if you are doing it in blog posts or sermons, that you would make sure you'd have parts of that that would be just kind of more natural language, the way that you and I speak, then it will be more likely to match someone's query. So if I was going to be looking for a plumber, let's say, for instance, I would probably say something in voice search. I'd probably say something more like plumbers near me or best plumbers in, in my city or something like that, as opposed to if I was actually doing some research on there, I might type in plumbers in Hawaii Kai and, you know, do some more digging on things. And we have to remember also that people are going to be looking for much quicker answers with this and we'll talk more about that as we go. But as you think about things, like try to find ways to use the way that people naturally talk in your content and you'll usually do better on voice searches. [00:06:32] Speaker B: That makes sense. Second one that also is important here is FAQ sections. Now, we do know, I mean, faqs are pretty common on websites and church websites. But what do we specifically mean with this for voice search? [00:06:47] Speaker A: Well, so this is a perfect example of faqs are trying to answer those questions that are frequently asked. And so if people are more likely to do quick questions into a voice search, then your FAQ content is very often going to be the thing that it's most likely to key in on and give you rankings when you do those kinds of things. So, you know, a lot of times in churches we use our faqs. We have one FAQ and it's usually the same content. Like, you know, where do I show up and what do I wear? We make a joke about how you can wear whatever you want, but you have to wear clothes and, you know, that kind of stuff. So we have a lot of those things. But one of the things we've tried to implement is on almost all of our kind of researched blog posts. We try to include an FAQ section in every blog post. Yeah, or maybe a church. I mean, as an idea, I haven't seen a church do this, but I think this would really do well if you were to include in your sermons that you put on there, that you would have maybe an FAQ section at the end of your sermon content, not in the actual sermon you deliver, but in the actual one that you've put on your site, that maybe you have a synopsis of the sermon or a transcript. And then in there, if you included an FAQ section, it's very likely that those are the kinds of questions that people will be asking. Like, so if you did a message on tithing, what would stop you from at the end of the post for your sermon on the site, including some content like what is the tithe? How much is the tithe? And one of the best sources for this is if you type in whatever your main topic is of your sermon or your blog post, you type it into Google and you head about ten results down. Usually you'll see a section that's called people also ask. And this is real data from Google that they are saying. When people research tithing, we notice that they also ask about how much is the tithe and is tithing for today, is tithing biblical? Is tithing in the New Testament? All those kinds of things are what you're going to see there. And so if you kind of build an FAQ section around those, people also ask questions, it's very likely you're going to be able to rank for some of those kinds of questions because Google's already telling you that people are searching for it. They already ask this. So it's kind of some free information that's a search hack you can take to the bank, whether it's for natural language or not. But yeah, faqs are going to be really important. [00:09:14] Speaker B: That's cool stuff. Yeah, that's good. Thanks for elaborating on that. What about us? This next one's interesting. Structured data markup. What are we talking about here? [00:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah, so when we talk about structured data, it's just using the right formats for all of your content on your site. So when we say this, it's, there's, when you write online, you have different levels of headings, and you probably see this in, you certainly see it in your Google Docs or on a word document. You'll have things like heading one and heading two all the way down to heading six and you want to make sure that you're using that. You're using body copy for body sections, you're using bold for bold sections, you're using quote structures for quotes if people are looking for those kinds of things. So these are the kind of things that people are going to be naturally searching. And so you want to make sure that you're using the structure that your website provides and make sure things are formatted properly. One of the mistakes I see a lot of churches make is you'll have maybe a title and then you'll have a block of text that's 1000 characters long without any kind of breakup in that or subheadings or any of that stuff. And just by adding that, it helps Google and other search engines categorize the information and make it more approachable, especially for voice searching. So you want to pay attention to that. [00:10:35] Speaker B: That's good. And here's another markup one which is schema markup for events. [00:10:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that we see is that a lot of churches, the content that's most likely to be found on a voice search is going to be event related content because that's something that people in your community are searching for. So it wouldn't surprise me for someone to pick up their phone and say Christmas Eve services near me or Halloween events in my city or vacation Bible schools and they'll, they'll do those kinds of searches there. And so there is very specific markup language that you can use for your events. So rather than just having a section on your page where it's just a block of text that says we start here, we end at this time and it's on this date, that information, you can actually use markup language. And any good like events plugin, if you're on WordPress or using an event system is going to help with this markup language. If it's, if it's a good piece of software, it'll always do that for you. But what this does is it tells Google that this time is the event start time and this time is the event finishing time and this is the event date, this is the event title, here's the description. And when you have all that kind of information, it just helps Google realize this is an event that's happening and it's a good piece of content to show to someone that is doing a voice search for events in their area. So just kind of staying close to Google's best practices, especially with this markup language, that's really, that's really half the battle with this. [00:12:14] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's how a lot of churches reach first time visitors is through events too. So not just their, their membership, you want to be visible for that and searchable there. So good. Next one is featured snippets here. So snippets, what we're talking about, like concise summaries that you want to have content for. [00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah, kind of. So when we talk about featured snippets in a search engine kind of way of thinking, when you do a search, especially for questions, you'll probably notice that usually the first result on a Google search is going to be just an actual answer to your question. That makes someone not even have to go into the site. But a lot of times what that does though, is it they'll also give you the top position in the ranking. So let's say that someone, let's go back to that tithing sermon you did, and let's say someone types in a question like is tithing in the New Testament or what New Testament verses talk about tithing? Well, if you have an FAQ section on your site and you answer that exact question in a very simple, like one or two sentence kind of way that says that this verse in the New Testament addresses tithing and then you have the verse on there, there's a good chance you could rank for the featured snippet, which would mean that your question, your answer would come up at the very top of a Google search. And then if they wanted to learn more, your site would have number one billing for that particular question there. So this is something that you want to really target. And the way that you do that is you, again, you use that people also ask section there and then try typing that in. You try type, if you maybe are typing and you can go ahead and try this as you're listening to this podcast, type in a search like is tithing for today and chances are you'll get a featured snippet. Not every search has a featured snippet. And look at what, who has the featured snippet and what are they doing? And is the answer as good as it can possibly be? Is this the best possible answer for that? Really, featured snippets are kind of a shortcut that a lot of churches miss because it doesn't really matter that much if you have a lot of links to your site or you're a really big church or not really, just about any church can rank for a question. If you actually word it right and you're really clear and concise and give a really great answer to a question. So something to be thinking about is how you can get those featured snippets, because those voice searches, oftentimes they're not going to be that. People just want an answer, right? So they're not going to be looking at their phones and then clicking onto the site and doing research. They actually just want the voice assistant to tell them the answer and you have a chance to kind of dictate what that is. So, pretty cool opportunity. [00:15:09] Speaker B: That is cool. And that's interesting. Well, last but not least, we always end with some way to measure results or calls to action sometimes when we're talking about marketing, but we're talking here about monitoring your voice search performance. So obviously, if you're doing these things, you want to be able to monitor and track it, right? [00:15:28] Speaker A: Yep, absolutely. So the best resource for this is going to be using Google Analytics and really measuring, using Google's tool to see where searches are coming from, what kind of device they are on. And now you can measure whether they're done via voice or they're done by being typed in on a mobile device. So there's lots of flexibility there. But you want to take a look at that. I think the best thing to look at is the featured snippets that you're ranking for. These will be one of the primary ways that you will see whether voice search is working or not. And you can measure this kind of information. You can find it in Google Analytics. We use another tool called SEM Rush or Semrush is another one called hrefs or ahrefs.com. those two tools are the two biggest ones for measuring these kinds of things. But you want to see, you know, are we getting rankings for featured snippets for this particular topic that we want to be talking about? You keep an eye on that kind of stuff. These things do tend to fluctuate. Just because you have a featured snippet today, it doesn't mean you'll have it three days from now. So you do want to keep an eye on that. It's something that we watch here at retry. When people are searching for natural language type terms, we notice that these fluctuate all the time. So, yeah, keep an eye on it and as things change and maybe you have a chance to move up or maybe you're moving down, make some course corrections and you can keep ranking. [00:16:52] Speaker B: Absolutely. And again, at the end of the day, it's for churches to be more visible, to reach more visitors and get them plugged into the life of the church. [00:17:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I know it's a little bit more of an advanced SEO technique. I know that not every church is going to be diving in deep to voice specific search engine optimization strategies. So, you know, we are a pretty tight niche with this kind of thing, but it is something that I think has the potential to reach more visitors, and that's why we talk about it. If you are looking for some help at your church in just kind of getting started in search engine optimization, we have a lot of other great video content. We also offer a totally free local SEO report for churches. So you can put in just your church name and we'll actually do a lot of the research. It's a totally automated tool. We send a report right to your inbox and you can see where you rank specifically for people doing local searches. So someone types in churches near me or something to that effect. You'll see kind of how you guys stack up right there and yeah, take advantage of that. Totally free if it's something. If you're a church, we'd love to provide that for you. Anything to add as we close, Ian? [00:18:05] Speaker B: No, no, no. Very well put, Thomas. [00:18:07] Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks man, and hope this has been helpful to you. If it has, it would mean a lot to us if you would hit that subscribe button. If you're watching on YouTube, follow us. If you're listening on a podcast player on your phone. Thanks guys, for being a part of the Reachwrite family and we'll see you next time. [00:18:23] Speaker B: See ya.