Understand the Structure of Voice Search for SEO
2 types of devices used for voice search
We need to understand who is searching and how. so there are 2 different paradigms:
Audio-first devices:
Devices that are generally at your home or office like google home, amazon echo, apple home pod etc. basically smart home devices for people asking things like “what’s the weather outside” or “turn on my favorite playlist inside the house” or some other searches that are more useful for online marketers. We will discuss this more later in this article.
None audio-first devices:
This is basically your cellphone which is with you all the time. One the phone people basically ask for services, local bars, local shops, local businesses that they can take action on. They search for local coffee shop, this what they want and where they go. There are huge amount of data that shows that people who have locally searched business will finally be going there the same day or that week.
No direct/exact search data:
Here’s the trick, google or amazon won’t tell the marketers how many people have searched for what kind of terms in their devices. Of course when people by typing into google, google does give us this data. Keyword tools on google show us what exact keywords people search how many people search that term and related terms, but there is no such thing for voice, so you have to guess or extrapolate about that.
No serps:
There is no google top ten here, there is just the answer. So those are the market differences between traditional type search and voice search, two different type of devices, some are audio- first which has their own searches, people will search differently inside their home than when they are outside with their phone, they search differently as well.
What people are searching for with Voice search
Let’s go over thing people are searching for.
There are three different overarching type of searches:
Social/convenience searches:
Type of search we as marketers and people who have a business to promote don’t care about but as users we might. For example “play me a part of song on Spotify” nothing you can do there, “call john…” or “text someone”, nothing you can do there as marketers.
But there three categories that are useful for example
Local business:
Where can I buy this type of wrench near me, so if you are a hardware store you really want to be found by that search, what kind of restaurants has salami or special and unique thing on their menu. Those are kind of searches you really need to get in front of. Or what are the store hours for certain coffee shops. Those are the kind of searches you desperately need to rank for if you want to look for local searches.
Ecommerce business:
There are things in ecommerce people search very often in their homes, like things people have to replace in their homes, like products, food, apparels, and generally things people have to buy, they say “buy me summer shoes”. These are the kind of things people search at their home.
Information:
And also people search for information and if you can get immediate answer, you can promote your business like that, although local business and ecommerce search are much more direct commerce and more lucrative, but information can be also helpful.
One thing you have to be aware of is that when people use voice search, they search differently, they search longer and more natural language searches, for example you can type “which restaurant are healthiest” if I want to choose a restaurant to eat in today, you will find and answer box and recently you can see these boxes for more and more searches. First of all where is the answer box? If you have a direct answer, that’s where the answer can go, there may be an answer for this relatively simple question, it’s not the most simple question, it can be simpler than that but it still is in the realm of what google tries to answer here for your convenience so you don’t have to click on any sites. But if you search for a harder question, like about a vegan restaurant, you may need a website for the answer to that question, so where does that lead us? You can create and FAQ page with all kind of answers. Let’s say you are the owner of a hardware store, and you have an answer for any kind of questions you get about your business. So you build a very long FAQ with a lot of unique queries and you can do this on your first day too because of you are running a hardware store or restaurants you get questions like “ do you have vegan food” or “ “do you support halal?” or “what kind of meat you have? Do you have pork” etc… all these kind of questions you need to start answering in FAQ page on your site because google pulls this out right away.
For example if you have grout cleaning products like one of my clients has, and people have all kind of questions about it like ‘does it work on kitchen tiles’ or “does it work on bathroom tiles” or “ how to clean grout that is on the floor or on the wall?” or “ what kind of brush do I have to use?” or “ what kind of chemical is in that?” and thousands other questions you can answer in your FAQ page and if you search for grout cleaning products, you will see an answer box and so my clients needs to answer all unique questions in his FAQ page for any keywords and long tail keywords. So no matter what kind of business you have you should an FAQ page answering all kinds of questions people might have and you will be able to come up with natural looking search results that are things people ask on their device.
