SEO Is Dead: Here Comes Siri

Law firm owners obsess about ranking well on Google. That game is coming to an end. It’s time to focus on Siri.

Siri is the personal assistant built in to the iPhone 4S.

When I need a divorce lawyer in Raleigh, I tell Siri that “I need a divorce lawyer in Raleigh,” and it returns a list of lawyers with reviews and their location on a map. If I just say “I need a divorce lawyer,” it returns lawyers nearby along with their ratings and locations.

I can hear you now: “It’s just another gimmick; it won’t last…”

I’ve got two responses for you. First, you don’t know what you’re talking about until you’ve used Siri. It’s incredible, and it works like a charm. I find myself using it constantly. “When I get home, remind me to fix the toilet,” I tell it and, boom, I pull up at home and it reminds me. “Wake me up at seven,” and I’m good to go at seven. “Text my wife that I’m on the way,” and off goes the text. The thing is amazing; it can even tell me the flight number of the airplane flying over my head. I’ve become very dependent because it totally works, and it gets better every day.

Second, the computer gurus are already doing tests, and one small study at The Arora Report revealed that every test subject who tried Siri reported seeing no need to EVER use Google again. In a ChangeWave survey of iPhone 4S users, Siri was ranked as the most important feature of the phone. You’ll be seeing more study results soon.

By the way, iPhone users fall into an excellent demographic for clients. And, if you haven’t noticed, they can’t make iPhones as fast as they can sell them.

What should you be doing?

Worry about Yelp. Get positive customer reviews there. That won’t be easy because it’s really hard to game Yelp. The site has great systems for preventing reviews from appearing from anyone not very active in the Yelp system.

Make sure you’ve got good visibility on local search engine listings like Bing and Google. Get your listings in order if you haven’t already.

Yelp is hard and will take time. The local listings are easy and should be done today.

Siri is important—very important. It’s going to have a big impact on the business you generate from people who don’t have a connection to you already. If you rely on the Web for clients, it’s time to shift a big part of your energy in a new direction.

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