Katherine Watier Ong@kwatier

@kwatier

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SEO for Voice Search

Katherine Watier Ong

• Owner of WO Strategies LLC

• 17 years of communications experience

• 12 years of online marketing experience (SEO, SEM, social media, web analytics)

• Built first website in 1994

• Once crashed a website for 4 days and still received almost 1.3 million visitors/mo. (up from 300K)

• Wrote master’s thesis on consumer adoption of wearable computers

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Brands Katherine has worked with

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Current State of Voice Search

Google study (2014): 55% of teenagers & 45% of adults use voice search daily

Adoption is Increasing● 1 in 5 searches on mobile apps in the U.S. are

voice searches. (May 2016)

● By 2020 prediction is 1/2 of all searches will be

voice search (Mary Meeker).

● Today, speech recognition word error rate is 8

percent.

● Speed! Humans can speak 150 wpm, vs. typing at

40 wpm.

How is voice search different?On desktop you’re more likely to type: “weather paris”

With voice search you’re more likely to ask:

“What’s the weather like in Paris?”

Are you already appearing in mobile searches?

● 73% of Google search results show different results on mobile devices compared to desktop, so optimizing just for mobile is not enough - BrightEdge 2016 research

● 51% of smartphone users have discovered a new product or company via mobile search.

Top Reasons for using Voice Search

Get your featured snippet

Google Home will read featured snippets along with your promo

messages

Paid search won’t help

Ads are currently being served for voice queries

However they are thinking about it:

"I think it can range from being purely

transactional meaning we make it convenient for

you to fulfill a transaction with this assistance or

it can involve promotion" but that his team "are

keeping an open mind about the kind of

monetization opportunity that there is going to

be."

-Google's SVP of advertising and commerce,

Sridhar Ramaswamy

Brainstorming Keyword Topics

“Is there anything about my brand that

someone might be interested in while on the

go?”

Am I currently seeing voice search queries?Credit Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Is your content voice ready?

● What questions should this page answer

for visitors?

● Is it currently answering those questions?

● Does it offer complete information? In

other words, would someone return to

the search results after checking this

page?

● In what contexts do people search for a

page like this?

● Is the page ready for mobile search?

● Is the content approachable and easy to

read?

Note about PersonalizationAll voice query results and personal assistance

results are personalized based on the user’s

device.

Most users in the US don’t share devices.

Using Voice Search as a

Radio Ad

In the latest version of the Google Search

App for iOS and Android the search app can

speak your answer right back to you.

Google will chat back to you when the query

has a knowledge graph result or rich snippet

result. [Source]

Even more reason for you to own that rich

result.

Difference between Desktop and Voice1. Voice has longer queries

2. Natural language means more question phrases

3. Natural language reveals intent clearly

4. Voice search has high local value;

5. And greatly impacts 3rd-party listings

Fun with Google Voice

Casting Harry Potter spells on your phone:

Android Users:

● ‘Ok Google’

● ‘Lumos’ or ‘Nox’

● “Silencio”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ONXea0mXg

How to optimize for voice search?

● Look for signs of voice queries in your

GSC search query reports

● Think about ways to prioritize the

types of queries they want to optimize

for voice.○ Create an FAQ page

● Make sure that you’re using

microdata/schema and that it’s

accurate.

KATHERINE WATIER ONG

202-930-1744

katherine@wostrategies.com

@kwatier

www.linkedin.com/in/katherinewatier

www.WOStrategies.com

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Stay in touch!