Look, the way people find you has changed
I was sitting at a pub in Paddington last Friday. A mate of mine, runs a decent-sized plumbing outfit, was moaning about his website.
"I'm spending all this money on SEO," he said, "but half the blokes I know don't even type anymore. They just shout at their dashboards while they're driving to the next job."
He's right.
Think about how you use your phone. You’re driving, you’re covered in grease, or you’re wrangling the kids. You don’t pull over to type "best mechanic near me" into Google. You hit the button on the steering wheel and say, "Hey Siri, find a mechanic open now."
If your business doesn't show up for that question, you don't exist to that customer.
Most agencies will try to sell you some fancy "Voice Search Optimization" package for five grand a month. Honestly? It’s mostly common sense and good local SEO basics.
You don't need a PhD. You just need to understand how people talk when they're looking for help.
The "Kitchen Bench" Test
Here’s a story about a client of ours—let’s call him Kev. Kev runs an electrical business.
Kev was obsessed with ranking for the word "Electrician Brisbane." Fair enough. It's a big term. But when we looked at his data, we noticed something interesting.
People weren't just searching for "Electrician." They were asking their Google Home devices questions like, "How much does it cost to install a ceiling fan?" or "Why is my safety switch tripping?"
Kev’s website had none of those answers. It just said "We are the best electricians in Brisbane since 1994."
Who cares?
When someone asks a voice assistant a question, Google wants to give them a specific answer, not a sales pitch.
We sat down with Kev and asked him: "What are the top 10 questions people ask you on the phone before they book?"
He rattled them off in two minutes. We put those exact questions on his site with simple, honest answers.
Within three months, his phone was ringing more. Not because he was ranking #1 for a generic keyword, but because he was winning the "voice" battle by being helpful.
Stop writing like a textbook
Most business websites are boring. They’re written by people trying to sound "professional."
"Our firm provides comprehensive residential maintenance solutions."
Nobody talks like that. If you said that at the pub, your mates would pour a beer on your head.
Voice search is conversational. It’s informal. If you want to win, your website needs to sound like a human being.
Instead of "comprehensive maintenance," try "We fix leaky taps and blocked toilets."
When someone asks Siri for help, she looks for the most natural answer. She’s not looking for a corporate brochure. She’s looking for a solution.
The Secret Sauce: Google Business Profile
If you do nothing else after reading this, do this one thing: Fix your Google Business Profile.
When someone says "find a locksmith near me," Google doesn't go scrolling through 50 pages of website text. It looks at the map.
If your address is wrong, your phone number is old, or you have three stars because you didn't reply to that one grumpy customer from 2019, you’re out of the game.
You need to get more local calls by making sure Google knows exactly where you are and that people actually like you.
Update your photos. Post a quick update once a week. Reply to every single review. It sounds like a chore, but it’s the difference between a ringing phone and a quiet shop.
What’s it going to cost you?
I’ll be straight with you. You can spend a fortune on this if you hire the wrong people.
Some agencies will charge you for "Schema Markup" and "Technical Audit Reports" that are 80 pages long and mean absolutely nothing to your bottom line.
In reality? You can do most of the heavy lifting yourself by just being useful to your customers.
If you want a pro to handle it, you should know what SEO actually costs in Australia so you don't get taken for a ride.
Expect to pay for quality, but don't pay for jargon. If they can't explain why they're doing something in plain English, they probably don't know why they're doing it either.
The "Right Now" Factor
Voice search is usually about "right now."
- "Where is the nearest coffee shop?" - "Who is an emergency plumber open now?" - "How do I get to the airport?"
These people are ready to spend money. They aren't researching; they're buying.
If your website takes ten seconds to load on a phone, they’re gone. If your phone number isn't a "click-to-call" link, they’re gone.
You have to make it brain-dead simple for them to give you money.
My Honest Advice
Don't get bogged down in the tech. Don't worry about the latest "algorithm update" or whatever the nerds are talking about on Twitter this week.
Focus on this: 1. Answer the questions your customers actually ask. 2. Make sure your Google map listing is perfect. 3. Write like you talk. 4. Make sure your site works fast on a phone.
That’s it. That’s the "ultimate guide."
If you do those four things, you’ll beat 90% of your competitors who are still trying to rank for keywords from 2012.
If you’re too busy running your business to worry about all this, that’s where we come in. We don't do fluff, and we don't do jargon. We just help local Brisbane businesses get more customers.
Drop us a line at Local Marketing Group and let’s have a chat about how to get your phone ringing.