Katherine Watier Ong is an expert in SEO for voice search with over 17 years of experience in communications and 12 years in online marketing. Voice search usage is increasing rapidly, with over half of teenagers and adults using it daily. By 2020, it is predicted that half of all searches will be voice searches. Voice search queries tend to be in natural language phrases rather than keywords. Proper optimization for voice search involves things like having an FAQ page, using schema markup, and prioritizing question-style queries.

1. Katherine Watier Ong
@kwatier 1
SEO for Voice Search

2. 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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3. Brands Katherine has worked with
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4. Current State of Voice Search

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

7. 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.

8. 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?”

10. 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.

11. Top Reasons for
using Voice
Search

12. Get your featured
snippet
Google Home will read featured snippets along with your promo
messages

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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?

16. Note about
Personalization
All voice query results and personal assistance
results are personalized based on the user’s
device.
Most users in the US don’t share devices.

17. 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.

18. Difference between Desktop
and Voice
1. 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

19. Fun with Google
Voice
Casting Harry Potter spells on your phone:
Android Users:
● ‘Ok Google’
● ‘Lumos’ or ‘Nox’
● “Silencio”

21. 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.

22. 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!