Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). It brings in more organic (unpaid) traffic to a website. This is done by making website search engine friendly, optimizing content and adding keywords. Keywords are those words that the user is most likely to use while searching on the internet.
The art of Search Engine Optimization has been easy to learn but hard to master. But this efficient and cost-effective digital marketing technique has benefited established and new businesses alike. It is likely to influence organic traffic for some time to come, but with technology growing exponentially; it was a matter of time.
The new innovations that would make browsing a more interactive experience would appear. With the rise of visual and voice searches it seems the new players are in town. But how they would affect the role of SEO is yet to fully understand.
If experts and researchers are to be believed visual and voice related searches will reduce the traditional text-based searches by quite an extent. The existing websites will have to re-design.
Visual Search:
The human mind processes images faster and stores details in form of visuals. Thus searching for products by uploading an image of what you’re looking for seems convenient. Trends show the use of images for searching fashion and home decor is on the rise.
Google image search has been around for some time now. But with increased use of AI and visual search technologies like Google Lens, Pinterest Lens popularity with Amazon and Bing investing heavily, is indicative of the fact that visual search is come of age.
Visual Search is beneficent for both, users and E-commerce sites. It would help the user to simplify their search from having to grow through the pain of describing the product to simply clicking a picture and uploading it on the search engine.
The websites will be expected to upload pictures to the usual informative content to be amongst top results for a visual search.
A few ways to optimize your visual search for better results:
- Add illustrative images for representing products and service
- Add good quality photos relevant to the topic
- Appropriate dimensions for the photos to be visible on all devices
- Correct file format and ratio
- Optimize images for quick page load
- Alt text also called an alt tag, alt description is used to embed HTML code. It is to describe the context or function of the image.
Voice Search:
The ability to look for results on Google by speaking to your phone is comparatively new, but now it amounts to one-fifth of all search queries on Google via Android devices and is expected to double in a few years.
Personal assistant apps like Siri has made life so effortless with advancements in AI and Smartphone technology, voice search very well may replace the traditional keyword search.
The main difference between text search and voice search will less use of keywords as spoken queries tend to contain more syllables, this would cause keywords to be lengthier.
Mostly found that voice search is used by the users to search about any song when there are hearing a little music from longer distance and not able to recognize actual song. Even when users know that how to call a thing but don’t remember accurate spelling of that, user like to speak over the search engine and able to find more accurate result than the text search.
It is found that many companies are using voice search engines to accomplish their search task to save their time, these companies includes IT, Health Care, Financial etc.
Marketers will have to plan SEO and construct keywords in accordance with what a user might speak and not what the user may type.
A few ways to optimize your voice search for better results:
Optimize for Mobiles:
Mobile handsets have become a daily accessory for billions of people. Most of the search queries(voice searches) are via mobile phones hence making your website mobile friendly is advised.
Long Tail Keywords:
While speaking people use a grammatically correct form of a language which contains more words than a usual keyword.
Add FAQs page:
When making this page it is advised to use long tails keywords as used in the form of conversation and the questions should be drafted in a manner that is seen as casual and not uptight professional.
Fast page loading:
A websites page speed decides how long a user will stay on a page. Most users leave in the first 4 seconds. Average search result page loads in 4.6 seconds, 52 percent faster than the average text page.
Building a content strategy:
Make keywords around common queries of “how”, “what”, “where” and “when” and optimize the new updates.
Krishan Jangir