The major components of a solid search engine optimization strategy remain as strong as ever before, but some of them have evolved into something more interesting in terms of definition and purpose. The continuous development of search engineering is moving the industry towards visual and voice search. These are incoming trends that triggered the growth of the industry’s scope and allowed it to evolve into a more powerful tool.
Visual and voice search are new technological facets that provide an answer to a real customer need. It is supported by results of consumer reports which reveal that:
- 74% of shoppers observed that text only search is not enough to let them find the products they are looking for
- 90% of all information received by the brain is visual. The brain processes this information 60,000 times faster than text.
- 67% of consumers relate that the quality of images of products plays a vital role in a person’s decision when selecting and purchasing a product.
With this in mind, it is not surprising for Gartner /ITxpo, North America’s premier technology leadership conference, to predict that by 2050, digital commerce revenue for brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase by 30%. This prediction was backed partly by Pinterest founder and CEO Ben Silbermann who says that “a lot of the future of search is going to be about pictures instead of keywords.”
What Makes Voice and Visual Search Effective?
Visual and voice search allow marketers to have deeper engagements with their audience in every step of the buying process. It’s a move that takes both the website and its audience to a level that is higher and better than static websites. It opens up to the possibility of a more interactive experience that is accessible on any device regardless of the place and time.
Warrant the effectiveness of your marketing strategy by making sure that your customers can find your site as easily as possible. You may not know it but the number of voice and visual users are increasing rapidly. You should not allow your business to be left behind by ignoring this demographic.
Because the visual and voice search technology is relatively new, you might come to think that you will have a hard time to adjust and adapt to this technological revolution. But it isn’t really as daunting as it looks. You may encounter a few challenges but if you can imagine the benefits these technologies can bring to your business, you’ll certainly want it on your website. You just need to focus on learning some techniques and using a few tools to give your marketing strategy the capability to accommodate voice and visual search. If you are ready, you can start with the basics.
What is voice search?
As its name suggests, voice search is about giving a virtual assistant such as Cortana or Google Assistant a spoken command and getting relevant search results. You can expect audible and visual results for your verbal search query.
Voice search has a lot of Search Engine Optimization benefits to offer. Major search engines like Google are increasingly highlighting user experience in so far as ranking pages is concerned. This is because voice search is currently the fastest means of delivering search queries. Another important advantage of voice search is you don’t need to worry about incorrect spellings; correct spelling is not required in this utility.
In a report, voicebot.ai, a leading source of voice web information in the U.S., stressed that voice commerce sales in the U. S. for the past year has reached $1.8 billion. They also predict these to reach $40 billion by 2022.
Harness the Power of Voice Search for Your Site
If you optimize your site for proven voice search platforms like Google Assistant, you’ll be able to tap into a key demographic. It enhances your visibility and increases your conversion rate in the process.
To be able to utilize the power of voice search, the first thing you need to do is structure your content. Once this is done, you may proceed to the next steps. These can help to ascertain that your site will be able to respond to specific search queries:
- Make sure that the written content of your website is clear, direct to the point and natural.
- Load your content with conversational keywords based on probable search terms.
- Avoid keyword stuffing by creating a structured Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. A study by Banklinko suggests that 2.6% of answers Google provided for voice search came from FAQ pages. This seems small, but it is way higher than the 1.4 percent results retrieved by desktop queries from FAQs.
- Focus on localized SEO. Simply incorporate locations into your keywords and you’re good to go, but don’t forget to pair it with a working SEO strategy. This increases the likelihood of voice searches giving meaningful results for your business.
- Be sure to make your website look great and mobile friendly. This is very important since voice search is done mostly on mobile devices. You can achieve this with the help of an outstanding open-source platform called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). It enables you to create fast-loading web pages with no coding required.
What is Visual Search?
Visual search involves uploading an image for the website to look up and receive relevant results in return. If for example, a visitor uploads an image of a particular appliance to an appliance store’s app, the website will find specs of that item including relevant details on how to purchase it.
Visual search is no longer new to Google. It has given users the ability to upload an image or image URL into the search box to make it generate search results. With the advancement of technology, visual search has become handy with the smartphone camera. It could actually allow a user to point and shoot at a product, upload it to the search box and get quick results.
Aside from showing relevant search results, visual search also offers cross-selling benefits. You can actually configure your e-commerce site to show items similar to the one uploaded by a user into the search engine. Your site can also be configured to show complementary items (such as a handbag to complement a dress) as a result of a visual search.
Major retailers including Target are beginning to appreciate the great potentials of visual search. In fact, many marketing specialists now consider it as one of the most efficient ways to bring customers through the search funnel. So if you are a website owner or developer, it is utterly important for you to consider various search strategies that work to bring searchers to your website.
According to Grand View Research, a reputable research and review company in the U.S., the global image recognition market size was valued at USD 16.0 billion in 2016 and is likely to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 19.2 percent from 2017 to 2025.
Ways to Optimize Your SEO Strategy with Visual Search
- Assign clear and crisp textual elements to your images. This could be in the form of titles, captions or alternative text. This makes your images index better and frequently returned in search queries.
- Submit image sitemaps to Google. They work to make your site more visible.
- Make sure that your social media presence allows visual search. Make it a point that your business has a profile in social media platforms like Pinterest. It will help to increase the likelihood of your site getting into visual search results.
- If you have an e-commerce site, be sure to utilize an efficient app that allows visual search. Apps like ViSenze API receives and analyzes images forwarded by clients and quickly responds to those by displaying search results. Apps like this are already being used by big brands like UNIQLO and Goodrich Global.
Digital marketing strategies are primarily intended to provide the easiest possible way for customers to find your products or services online. Many strategies have come while some are gone, but because of the continued evolution of technology, optimization of websites for voice and visual search is now possible. This should be a fast and effective way for businesses to achieve marketing goals. You should consider it for your website – it might just be your way to the top.
If you want your website to be optimized for visual and voice search, or if you want to know more about the subject, don’t hesitate to contact us. We are Muzeum Marketing. We believe in creating solutions for your success.