VOICE SEARCH TO-DO LIST

Voice search is growing. And in the process it has become increasingly influential in both consumer behavior and search engine prioritization. Voice search makes up 20% of all Google mobile searches today, and the use of voice-enabled speakers is predicted to grow by 130% in the next year.

Is your health system voice-ready?

Take control of your digital knowledge.Recent reports suggest that 68% of all healthcare searches are performed on a mobile device. And Yext’s 2018 Patient Voice Search Behavior Survey found that 53% of patients said they would be interested in booking an appointment via a voice device, if that capability were available today. Patients are becoming increasingly sophisticated when it comes to searching for healthcare online, so it’s critical that you are in control of your health system’s data.

Establish a single source of truth for your data. Centralize the public facts about your health system (e.g., doctors, phone numbers, addresses, languages, specialties)

Keep public facing data on your own site and app up to date (you are the authoritative source!)

Claim and update your third-party listings (e.g., Google, Bing, Vitals, EZDoctor)

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly.Optimize your entire site for mobile (responsive web design and dynamic serving are both solid options to make your site mobile-friendly)

Keep resources crawlable (do not block search crawlers from finding your content with mistakes in your robots.txt file or by putting content inside Javascript)

Test your page load time with this tool from Google. If your page load times are slow, consider adding accelerated mobile pages (AMP) to your site

Prioritize the mobile user experience — that means no unplayable Flash video, etc.

Test your site using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool

Structure your data.Patients increasingly search with local intent, using queries like, “is doctor smith located near me” or “find the best dentist near me.” These facts, and the structured data markup that make them easy for search engines to identify, are important for both SEO and voice search.

Add Schema tags to critical business data on your website, including:address

hours of operation

phone number

reviews (properly marking up the first-party reviews you generate for your doctors and locations)

industry-specific elements (e.g., physician credentials)

Test your structured data using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool

Optimize your content for voice search.Make sure the length of your answer is relative to the complexity of the question

Formulate the answer appropriately grammatically accuraterelevant attributions are called out (like physician certifications, accepted insurance, etc.)provide adequate context and reference materials

Write in a way that sounds natural when spoken

Create a unique persona for your health system

Build interactive capabilities for smart speakers (Alexa Skills and Google Actions)

10% of patients today are searching for healthcare via voice devices.- Yext Patient Voice Search

Behavior Survey, 2018

Make your site secure (HTTPS).Ask your hosting provider to move you to secure hosting

Research HTTPS best practices and follow them — this isn’t optional anymore (check out Google’s recommendations to start)

Learn more at yext.com

By 2022, 55% of U.S. households will have voice-enabled smart speakers.-TechCrunch, 2017