What Is Voice Search SEO, and Why Should Your HVAC Business Care? 

“Hey Siri, find a local HVAC company for me.”

“Okay Google, how do I change my furnace filter?”

“Alexa, what do I do if my AC is blowing out hot air?”

These are all questions potential customers in your area are asking using voice search. And ideally, the voice search tool would direct them to your website. 

What is voice search SEO? It’s the process of optimizing your website for voice searches — i.e., the questions people verbally ask their phones and other smart devices.

As an HVAC professional, you might feel like voice search SEO is too complicated a strategy for you to mess with. But in reality, voice search SEO is something your HVAC business should care about. Your competitors are already using it to capture leads and convert customers in your area. By learning the techniques behind this tactic, you can stay competitive and continue reaching potential customers where they are. 

Here’s what you need to know about voice search SEO for HVAC companies​​​​​​.

What Is Voice Search SEO?

Before you can understand voice search SEO, you need to first understand voice search.

If you have ever asked Siri or Alexa a question on a smart device, you have completed a voice search. This is the process of asking a question out loud rather than typing it into a search engine.

Google, Siri, Alexa, and similar tools have voice search features, allowing you to talk to them instead of typing in a query. They will listen to your question, then search through the device or perform an internet search to find the answer for you. 

When you ask a question with one generally agreed-upon answer, such as “What is the temperature outside?” the device will tell you the answer. But if you ask a query that has many possible answers, the device will send you a link to a website or display several web pages that might answer it instead. 

How do Siri and Alexa determine which web pages to display for voice searches? This is the nature of voice search optimization. It’s the process of tailoring website content to voice search algorithms, making them more likely to display your website for queries related to your HVAC business. 

Voice search SEO pertains to queries directly about HVAC businesses, such as “Find an HVAC business near me” or “Show me an HVAC company that offers emergency services.” But it also matters for questions about topics related to your business, such as “How often should you change your furnace filter?” and “Why is my AC making a screeching noise?”

People use voice search to ask questions when they have their hands full or are too busy to type out the query manually. By optimizing your website for the types of queries users are most likely to ask with voice search, you can direct them to your site and ultimately convert them into customers. 

Why Does Optimizing Voice Search Matter for Your HVAC Business? 

Over 1 billion voice searches are performed each month, and this number continues to climb. As many as 65% of 25-to-49-year-olds speak to their voice-enabled devices each day. This frequency will only increase as more households purchase smart speaker devices; one stat estimates that as many as 75% of households will own one by the end of 2025. 

Why should you care about voice search SEO? These are just a few reasons:

• Your competitors are already doing it: Voice search optimization is one of those SEO trends that successful HVAC businesses have already begun capitalizing on. By neglecting this strategy, you will inevitably fall behind your competitors, even if you keep up with all other important SEO tactics. 
• Many people take voice search results as fact: When Siri or Alexa provides an answer to a question, many people assume the answer is correct. They trust their devices to provide accurate information to them. So when a device links to your website to answer a query, you build trust with your audience by showing them that you are a credible resource. 
• It’s a cost-effective strategy: Like traditional SEO, voice search SEO doesn’t cost anything to implement. You can use it to organically attract customers to your business. 
• People use voice searches for local queries: As a local HVAC business, you need to leverage all the strategies people use to conduct local searches. Voice searches are often used for local queries; someone might be driving or have their hands full and ask Siri to contact a local business nearby. 
• You’ll lose out on customers without it: Ultimately, voice search SEO is a way to attract new customers to your business. Neglecting this strategy will cause you to lose out on potential conversions that could be boosting your revenue. 

How To Optimize Your HVAC Website for Voice Search 

Leveraging voice search SEO for your HVAC business doesn’t mean completely transforming your website to only cater to voice queries. Instead, it involves tailoring the aspects of your website content most likely to answer voice searches. 

You can begin to optimize your site for voice search with these strategies. 

Cater Content to Conversational Queries

When people ask Siri or Alexa a question, they use much different wording than they do when typing a query into Google. 

For example, imagine you are searching for information about how to change a furnace filter. If you were to type this query into Google, you might say:

how to change furnace filter

In contrast, if you were vocalizing this question to a smart device, you’d probably say something like

How do I change my furnace filter? 

These subtle distinctions in language are a major focus of voice search SEO. Instead of only catering your blog posts and other website content to Google searches, you also need to begin targeting conversational keywords. 

Aside from speaking in full sentences when users talk to a voice search device, they also tend to give commands rather than simply listing relevant keywords. For example, a user searching Google for an HVAC company near them might type

HVAC near me

Meanwhile, a user asking Siri for HVAC company recommendations might say 

Show me HVAC businesses near me.

As you begin creating new website content that is optimized for voice search, think about the types of long-tail, conversational keywords you can use to match the queries potential customers are asking. It’s a bit more challenging to incorporate these first-person and natural language queries into written content, so you’ll need to make more of an effort to shape content around them.

Additionally, be sure to include several iterations of a question in your content. Along with “How do I change my furnace filter?” you might also want to optimize a page for related queries like:

• Tell me step by step how to change my furnace filter.
• Where is my furnace filter located?
• How do I know when it’s time to change the furnace filter?

Enhance Your Local Presence

Optimizing your site for conversational keywords is only one element of voice search SEO. Another involves ramping up your local SEO strategy. 

Many voice queries center around local topics. People use Siri, Google Voice Search, and Alexa to find local recommendations, like “What’s an HVAC company near me that is open right now?” 

By optimizing your local presence, you will enhance your voice search SEO strategy and your search engine optimization as a whole. Start by setting up your Google Business Profile if you haven’t yet. This is a profile that will appear when local users search for “HVAC business near me” and related terms. 

Your Google Business Profile includes information about your company, such as your address, phone number, hours of operation, and customer reviews. Mobile voice assistants often crawl these profiles to answer local queries. 

If you already have a Google Business Profile, take this opportunity to update and optimize it. Review it closely to make sure all information is correct. Any errors in your name, address, or phone number (NAP) data will hurt your search engine rankings. 

You can optimize this listing by:

• Uploading photos that represent your business
• Adding information about your services
• Writing descriptions of special offers and promotions
• Responding to customer reviews

Aside from enhancing your Google Business Profile, you can take other measures to improve local SEO. Write website content around locally oriented keywords, such as “HVAC company in [your city].” Also, submit your company’s information to local citations and online directories. 

Optimize Your Website for Mobile 

Users can perform voice searches on both mobile and desktop devices. However, the majority of these searches happen on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Even when users perform a voice search on a speaker instead of a device, it usually connects to a mobile device, displaying additional information. 

As a result, making sure your HVAC website looks good on mobile devices is another important step in voice search optimization. When users click on your website to learn more about the answer provided by their device, you want them to see an easy-to-navigate web page that clearly displays the most valuable information about your company, such as your business name, CTAs, contact information, and unique selling points. 

You can optimize your website for mobile by:

• Using a responsive design that adapts to mobile and desktop devices
• Including touch-friendly elements that are large and easy to tap with a finger
• Ensuring your website loads quickly on mobile devices
• Making content easy to read and digest on a small screen
• Testing your site on different mobile devices 

If your site looks good on mobile, it will better cater to the needs of users performing voice searches, helping you convert those users into customers. 

Answer Questions Directly

When people ask questions with a voice search device, they are looking for short, direct answers. They don’t want to have to browse through several web pages to find the answer to their query. Keep this in mind when creating website content that caters to voice queries. 

For example, if you are writing a blog post around the topic of “How often should I change my furnace filter?” include a paragraph on the page that clearly answers the question, such as:

“Change your furnace filter every two to three months — more often if you have pets or live in an area with heavy allergens. You can always examine your filter to see whether it needs to be changed; if you notice dirt or dust buildup, it’s best to swap it out with a new one.” 

This makes it more likely that the search engine will choose your website page to answer the user’s question. The voice search device will show your paragraph answer and link to that web page, so the user can discover more information. 

Optimize Structured Data and Aim for Featured Snippets 

Along with writing clear, direct answers to user queries in your website content, you can take other steps to show voice search devices that your website answers a user’s questions. The first is through optimizing structured data. 

Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a website page. It’s a way of showing Google and other search engine algorithms exactly what is on your page so they can use that information to determine search engine results. 

You can use structured data markup tools to essentially label the different elements of your website page, making it easier for search engines to crawl them. This involves adding specific code to your website. 

You can also aim to create website content that Google uses as featured snippets, which are special search result boxes that appear at the top of the results page. Voice search devices often take their answers from these snippets. You can encourage Google to use your content for featured snippets by writing clear, concise answers to common questions about HVAC topics. 

Use Other SEO Best Practices

Many of the same strategies that optimize your content for search engines also work for voice search SEO. By using other SEO best practices, you can make voice devices more likely to choose your website content to answer user queries. 

Best practices you should incorporate into your SEO strategy include:

• Centering website content around keywords that your target audience is already searching
• Improving your page loading speeds and other technical SEO elements
• Adding internal and external links to your content
• Using descriptive file names and alt text for images
• Adding title tags and meta descriptions to content
• Seeking links from other websites back to your site

These tactics will make your website more visible in general, increasing brand awareness while attracting new customers along the way.