A Marketing Trend You Can’t Afford to Ignore: Search Is Getting Wild

Back when “google” became a household verb, it meant typing a query into a search bar and seeing what websites pop up. Today, it’s a lot more complicated. For one thing, it might not be a search bar you’re using. More and more searches are being conducted by voice assistants like Alexa and Siri, or through image search. Secondly, the results might not be delivered in the form of a web page. It could be a snippet of text pulled directly into search results, a video on YouTube, or a product listing. 

As a premier Austin advertising agency, we have to keep track of this stuff constantly. Let’s break it down for you.

Mixed Results

As a (presumably) normal human being with typical web browsing habits, you are probably familiar with how search results have changed over the years. Ask Google about something, it might pull a snippet from a page directly into the search results. It may determine that video results should be the primary search result, or product listings.

What does that mean for your SEO services? Well, if you’re going after a keyword that pulls up video results first, and you don’t have a relevant video for it, you’re going to lose viewers. Even if you have a high page rank for that keyword, your site is getting shoved down further due to the video results. SEO consultants should look beyond what’s on your website to get you the best results. 

Talk Isn’t Cheap

With the proliferation of voice-activated digital assistants, people are getting more and more info from the Siris and Alexas of the world. When someone asks a question via voice command, it gets entered into the search differently than if someone were to type it.

For one thing, if you ask Siri for lunch options nearby, she will bring up a list of Yelp listings. For local businesses to get found in this type of search, these listings need to be fully optimized with keywords, images, and hopefully some five-star reviews. Companies like our Austin advertising agency place emphasis on branding and messaging, but a good one will never neglect these essential tools.

Snippet or Quit It

When searches are formed as a question, whether to a voice-activated assistant or the search bar, the results are often delivered in the form of a snippet. That’s where a paragraph or so of text is pulled from a relevant page and stuck in the search results. Or, in Alexa’s case, it’s the words the device reads to you. If you don’t have content that is informational, you will never come up as one of these results. That is why it is important to write articles and create videos that are more for general education on relevant topics than for direct conversions.

Search engine marketing is a bewildering, frustrating, yet potentially highly lucrative field of expertise, and one that is widely explored in the Austin advertising realm. That’s why we have in-house SEO experts who specialize in this. And if you own a business, you would do well to find a digital marketing agency with the capacity to come up with a strategy and deliver a website, a variety of content, and ads that convert customers from a wide range of search terms.

The bottom line: If you want greater visibility in search, you need to listen to your customers. Or you need to hire an Austin SEO company who does.