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How Visual and Voice Search Impacts the Future of SEO

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Written By Abdul Sami Hameed

Just as things are progressing ahead, digital marketing and its applications are inflating.

Brands all over the world are quickly switching to Search Engine technology as it is one of the widely used marketing staples.

Search Engine Optimization, which famously goes by the acronym SEO, has become a trend that is not only allowing brands to gain prospects but it’s also one of the most cost-effective ways to generate revenue.

The credit for the growth of SEO lies solely in the hands of Google.

With new updates making their way out all the time, Google has played an integral part in not only improving how the entire SEO works but also by incorporating new technologies to keep this marketing staple from ever becoming obsolete.

Speaking of new technologies, voice search and visual search have come forth as two new favorites that play their part in devising a highly effective marketing strategy.

Suffice it to say, the future of SEO is getting impacted by visual and voice search.

So without further ado, let’s discuss both and figure out their impact on the brands’ SEO.  

What is visual search and how does it work?

The visual search technology has been around for quite some time. There is a process that goes on behind visual search; let’s shed some light on that.

Visual search works by using an image instead of a ‘keyword’ that you usually enter in the search engine.

The search engine identifies the objects within the image and then uses those to search for images that have similar objects.

Google Lens and Pinterest are two of the most popular platforms that enable their users to perform a visual search, as both applications make smartphones work as visual search engines.

Visual search works with the help of two main factors, computer vision, and machine learning. It would be apt to state that these two factors act like eyes and brains for the computers.

Although computer vision has been around for quite a significant period, with the help of certain developments, machine learning is progressing at a rate that now it can figure out the images that have been entered.

Despite an image initially being just a series of 0s or 1s, but when those number strings are mixed with machine learning, the computer ultimately begins processing it and what you see in the end is an actual image related to the search you made.

How visual search impacts SEO

Visual Search is used for numerous things.

It has also proved to be one of the ways that are enabling brands to formulate a better SEO strategy that helps them enhance their communication with prospects.

Since brands are always after capitalizing the first opportunity they get, visual search is the best way that allows them to develop a good understanding of what their consumers’ needs are and how they should develop their strategy around those needs.

Fashion and interior designing brands are doing remarkably well with the help of this feature.

62 percent of the Millennials prefer visual search as that helps them instantly discover and identify the products they seek to buy.

Given the multiple things that brands can now do with this feature, Founder of Vue.ai, Ashwini Asokan calls visual search a Swiss army knife.

Anyways, getting back to visual search’s impact on SEO, we can’t simply overlook the fact that by using images as queries on a search engine, users can reach conclusive results.

Subsequently, for businesses, visual search has a massive impact when it comes to engagingly reaching their prospects.

And to spruce things up for you, E-commerce businesses based on interior designing or fashion, are the top ones to reap the most benefits out of it. How?

Well, let’s take a quick example of fashion brands.

Their consumers can now shop for their favorite items by trying out the dresses that they like, in a virtual ‘trying’ room.

This enables brands to interact with their consumers and make themselves accessible in the most creative and impacting way possible.

Speaking more about digital marketing campaigns – brands are now able to create a more noticeable buzz with the help of visual search.

This is because customers are hungry for marketing campaigns that ‘speak’ to them or address their needs directly. With the visual search feature, brands are incorporating augmented reality.

So, at the end of the day, if that makes their campaigns go viral, they would get an instant boost in the conversions.

Cutting it short, visual search is making a massive impact on the ‘organic’ growth of new and existing businesses.

Brands that have been focusing wholly on making their content better just so they could land among Google’s top-ranked websites are now feeling okay to try out the visual search to enhance their SEO strategy, as well.

It is because of this, brands are focusing on image optimization.

It matters which of the top internet services, like Windstream residential service, brands use to ensure that their website’s on-page SEO performs better.

With visual search as an additional feature, brands can even get their off-page SEO to perform just as best.

What is voice search and how does it work?

How Visual and Voice Search Impacts the Future of SEO

Pivoting to the voice search. It is the feature that allows users to speak into a device, unlike the conventional methods of performing a search where entering keywords was a crucial part.

The engineering behind voice search works when audio technology uses speech recognition to understand the user’s speech input and then delivers the results verbally.

However, unlike visual search that understands the imagery input easily, voice search requires extreme precision or the delivery of results might get affected because of that.

Two of the most commonly used voice search applications that have been around for quite some time are ‘Speech-to-Text’ and voice dialing.

 With the advent of AI assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, the use of voice search has met with an enormous boost.

Since it is known for drastically enhancing the user experience, it is predicted that by 2020, all of the searches will be made using voice search.

How does voice search have an impact on SEO?

Just as the cliché goes, SEO places relevant search results on top, based on the information it finds best and most relevant.

Not only Google, but other search engines are also emphasizing more on voice search optimization.

When users search for anything using ‘voice search’, they do so in hopes of getting help in completing an action, i.e. playing a video, opening an app or purchasing a product.

When a user searches for a website using voice input, Google quickly fetches data of the website that is the most responsive and loads without lagging.

However, websites must optimize their content for voice search by keeping natural, short and relevant phrases that could function like keywords, as well.

Also, voice search is one of the greatest ways that enable websites to get more traffic.

For example, if your website’s content is mentioned in AI assistants’ playbacks, then your website will ultimately end up with better traffic, and remember, better traffic means better on-page SEO.

Businesses that rely on a local target audience can benefit greatly from voice search. Usually, to find out options available near their location, users search for things by adding ‘near me’ to a keyword.

So websites that optimize their content for voice search with geo-tagging, have better chances to be fetched on top by Google.

In a nutshell, websites that opt for voice search to enhance their credibility among their competitors, actually contribute majorly towards their growth.

To better understand how voice search is changing the search pattern, take a look at this super-insightful infographic:

How Visual and Voice Search Impacts the Future of SEO 1 Expert tips to grow your business to success.

(source: googleblog.blogspot.com – OMG! Mobile voice survey reveals teens love to talk)

All things considered

By incorporating voice and visual search, businesses can attract new prospects and increase their conversions.

Doubtlessly, visual search is another highlight of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, for it can revolutionize consumers’ buying experience, to a level we can’t even comprehend.

Let’s put aside the SEO-based benefits and talk about a few benefits of these two features in our daily lives.

Voice search serves as the go-to solution for visually impaired persons, using which they can make offline and online searches.

On the other hand, visual search works best for people that have a hard time searching for the right keywords.

By taking just one picture and using it as search-query, they can search for numerous things online without any hassle.

While wrapping it all up, we can say that visual and voice searches are two advancements that have made the process of searching for things over search-engine, extremely efficient, quick, conclusive and moreover, enjoyable.

When all the brands are investing deftly in devising unique SEO strategies, visual and voice search are literally two of the things, incorporating which, businesses can do great organically.

So, now you know what to do – get an SEO expert, communicate your idea of optimizing your site using visual and voice search and watch your business grow.

It’s that simple!

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