GETTING FOUND, LAYER 2
The questions people ask before they call: how to map your search market from your own phone log
The second layer of getting found is knowing what people search and ask. Agencies call it mapping the search market. A contractor already has the map. It rings all day. Here is how to write it down, in both languages, and what to do with it.
A note on what this is. No keyword tool, no volumes, no numbers. A week of calls, a notebook, and the words people actually use.
Write down a week of calls
For one week, every call and text gets one line: what they asked, in their words, and which language. Not "AC repair." What they said: "the air is blowing but it is not cold." "Is it going to cost more on a Sunday." "Do you come to Doral." By Friday you have the list every search tool is trying to guess.
The three kinds of call
- The emergency: "there is water on the floor," "the power is out in half the house." They want a time, not a page.
- The job: "how much is a water heater," "do you install mini splits." They want a price or a range and a next step.
- The check: "are you licensed," "do you speak Spanish," "do you come to my neighborhood." They want a yes before they commit.
Each kind wants a different page and a different first text. The emergency wants your number and an arrival window. The job wants a page with a plain answer. The check wants the license, the languages and the areas, where a machine can find them too.
The same questions, asked to an AI
The new half of this layer is that the same person now asks an assistant in a full sentence. "Who fixes tankless water heaters in Westchester and answers in Spanish." The assistant answers with a name. The words are the ones from your phone log, in a longer sentence. If your pages answer the short version, they answer the long one.
THE PAIN POINT
What the other companies say
Search the three jobs you most want, and read the first three companies that come up. Not to copy them. To see what they do not answer. Most contractor pages never say a price, a timeline, or the area. The gap is where your page goes.
The two languages are two lists
The Spanish calls are not translations of the English ones. A Spanish caller asks "¿trabajan los sábados?" more than the English caller does, and asks about the license less, because the referral already vouched for you. Keep two lists. Write two sets of pages. The site that serves both languages from one list serves one of them badly.
What the list is for
The list becomes three things. The pages in layer three, one per question. The FAQ on each page, in the caller's words. And the first text that goes out when a call rings out, which should answer the question they were about to ask. Your reports later tell you which questions turned into jobs, by source and by language, and the list gets shorter and better.
A week of calls is enough. A month is better. Nothing here needs a tool; it needs someone to write the words down.
Questions we get asked about this
Do I need a keyword tool?
No. The tools guess at what people type. Your phone log is what they actually said. Start there. A tool can come later, if ever.
How do I know what people ask the AI assistants?
Ask them yourself. Type the question a customer asked you last week into ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, in a full sentence, in both languages. Read what comes back and who gets named. That is the map for layer five.
What if my Spanish and English calls ask different things?
They usually do. Keep two lists and write two sets of answers. It is the most common thing bilingual contractor sites get wrong: one list, translated.
Related
Want to read your phone log together?
Bring one week of calls to a 30-minute call. We will sort them into the three kinds and show you which pages and which first text each one wants.