How Voice and Visual Search are Transforming Marketing & SEO

Having been in digital marketing since 1994, I’ve seen firsthand how the digital landscape continues to expand and evolve. Today, with rapid advancements in AI and machine learning, the competition for consumer attention is fiercer than ever—whether you’re operating locally, nationally, or internationally. Businesses are facing a whole new level of challenge in capturing the interest of their target audiences.

Watching how search and voice has taken over our digital space I couldn’t help but write about how our clients can stay ahead of the competition. First you must adapt your digital marketing strategy to include new technologies, especially when talking about being found by search. 

Understanding the roles of the latest search tools, such as voice and visual search, can help you gain an advantage over competitors. How you and your customers use these tools can improve your knowledge, promote your expertise, generate leads, point traffic to your business site, and even change how people interact with your brand, products and services. Read on to learn more about voice and visual search optimization…

Understanding Voice and Visual Search

Voice Search

Some experts consider the end of the era of typing text-based searches on a hardware or virtual keyboard long overdue. Voice has grown in popularity exponentially in recent years, especially with new related voice-to-text and AI-powered search tools. Voice search is the most logical and ergonomic extension of natural human communication. A user merely needs to make a query verbally with the microphone on their networked computers, smart technologies or mobile devices.

Unsurprisingly, the key players in the voice search market are Amazon, Apple and Google and their respective voice assistants (i.e., Alexa, Siri and Assistant). Here are some reasons to consider;

• Convenience – Nearly 90% of consumers find voice search faster and more convenient than typing. It’s the go-to option when typing isn’t practical, like when you’re driving, cooking, or cleaning.
• Better Results – Voice search often delivers more precise answers tailored to the user’s needs. For instance, asking “What’s a good restaurant around here?” triggers a location-based search rather than just matching keywords.
• Conversational – Voice search is evolving to be more conversational, with people interacting with their devices as if they were talking to a friend.
• Accessibility – The rise of smart home devices and advancements in AI voice recognition have made voice search more accessible and increasingly popular.

Visual Search

The popularity of visual search has also risen in recent years. People often see things in their daily lives that prompt them to perform a search using one or more images instead of text keywords. They merely upload images instead of performing text searching. AI-powered image recognition tools like Google Lens then do all the work.

With high-quality visual search technologies, consumers typically search for vintage and new products they see while interacting with the world in person or online, businesses based on logos or brick-and-mortar structures, locations and potential real estate options based on buildings and landmarks, and even other people. Some searches have no purpose other than to find visual results that reveal a specific color or colors from a product, painting or nature to use for personal or commercial purposes. 

The Impact on Digital Marketing

Shifting from Text-Based Searches

Voice and visual searches differ from traditional text-based searches because they allow users to perform searches in the same way they might make queries conversationally when talking to someone about a topic.

For example, they might use conversational context and phrases via voice search. It’s also not uncommon for someone to see an image they want to know more about on a website, naturally believe they can search it using their browser, drag the image to a new tab, and wait for the technology to reveal information in the forms of descriptions, websites and other images.

AI-powered search algorithms and voice assistants are shaping search behaviors by providing access to vast storehouses of information via natural means. Although often equated with information kiosks, they’re more like librarians that efficiently keep a record of past searches, user interests and other factors that can help make searches more relevant to the user.

Changing User Behavior

One must consider when consumers perform voice searches, they use conversational speech and natural and relevant keywords similar to the language they use in a store during a shopping trip. They’re more likely to narrow down their search to specific details that can help them find what they want faster. The same is true of image-based queries. Images allow users to perform more precise and contextually accurate searches. 

As a result, consumers often optimize image searches by combining conversational speech, long-tail keywords and images when making a single search. These habits have changed traditional online user behavior and search patterns beyond text-based searches so much that businesses must invest in search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to match.

Strategies for Optimizing Voice Search

Incorporating Conversational Keywords

The first step to attracting and engaging your customers via voice and visual searches is changing the content on your website and other platforms that you use to promote your business to match spoken language and commonly used long-tail keywords. You need to learn how members of your target market speak when seeking information about products and services.

Enhancing Local SEO

The second step is to learn more about local search query practices and better understand their importance in voice search optimization. If you ever hope to attract local customers and enhance the user experience, it’s critical that you add local long-tail keywords to your business listings.

Creating FAQ Pages

The third step is to create and update Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages to reflect local trends. Technology companies design AI-based search algorithms and voice assistants with Natural Language Processing to seek information from these pages because FAQs provide concise details using language that people use when making spoken queries. For example, you might update an FAQ page to ask one or more questions from the customer’s perspective (i.e., “What do I…” or “How can I…”), which incorporate common keywords consumers use in text and spoken search queries.

Strategies for Optimizing Visual Search

Optimizing Images

The first step to making it easier for search engines to connect your content to a visual search query is to use quality content, including high-resolution images and structured data. Images become more relevant and easier for AI systems to match to those used in searches. With structured data, extremely accurate details appear in an associated markup language. Structured data is critical to helping search engines create accurate, attractive, rich snippets or search results that include extra engaging details that consumers value.

Implementing Structured Data

The second step with visual searches is to reduce confusion. By using markup language that specifically describes the content and purpose of every image you use on your website and elsewhere online, you guarantee that search engines can more easily understand the content and place those images into accurate categories based on a wide range of factors.

Leveraging Visual Search Technologies

The last step is to enhance your visual search capabilities by using tools that provide you with leverage. More often than not, the leverage comes from the technology’s links to search engines.

For example, with Google Lens, Google offers a visual search technology that’s integrated with their Android operating system, Chrome browser and search products. Lens pulls from Google’s main knowledge database, Google Knowledge Graph, relevant data based on the image, text, metadata and spoken language through any Android device, Chrome browser or the Google.com page.

Benefits of Voice and Visual Search Optimization

Enhanced User Experience

Voice and visual searches create a more intuitive, user-friendly search experience. Consumers don’t have to guess any longer the right keywords to retrieve the results they desire. Business owners like yourself don’t have to think of the right ones to use to connect back to their content. The technologies align with how people naturally communicate and interact with evolving technologies.

Increased Visibility and Engagement

When you optimize your content for voice and visual searches, you increase the chance of your business website and related platforms receiving attention from members of your target audience. This action draws more attention to the original content and your products and services, which helps improve sales, revenues, brand reputation and word-of-mouth advertising.

Staying Ahead of the Competition

Given how quickly trends change online, especially in the digital marketing sphere, it’s important to always do whatever is necessary to strategically stay ahead of competitors in local, national and global markets. By adopting and optimizing voice and visual search technologies today, you position yourself to outcompete other businesses in your industry. You also present yourself as a modern forward thinker who understands what consumers want and need, which appeals to technology-savvy search users.

Conclusion

You know that the only way to remain relevant and competitive in today’s marketplace is by recognizing and adopting technological trends that give you an advantage. Voice and visual search technologies guarantee a strategic advantage. They improve search recognition of your site and content, create better rich snippets in results, and increase traffic. They organically lead local and other consumers to your business listing, website and store faster.

To beat the competition, you need to embrace voice and visual searches and other SEO technologies. Contact Level343 for expert guidance on optimizing digital marketing strategies.