Emerging Verticals in Search

Voice, image, local and video search offerings provide users with options for locating information in the manner they prefer.

These emerging verticals do not require a completely different set of SEO skills — however, there are unique characteristics and nuances that you need to consider.

Voice

Digital assistants, such as Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa, have made their way into mobile devices, cars, wearables and smart home devices. You need to think about how users might formulate queries differently with voice when they speak a query versus typing a query.

The conventional wisdom is that voice queries are longer, they’re in the form of a question, as opposed to a more condensed set of keywords that may not be grammatically coherent. There’s a slightly different thinking around that and some people will say, look at the kinds of questions that people are asking you in different media channels and turn that into content on your website. Create FAQs, create content pages that reflect the common questions that people will ask and then, when people do ask those, whether via the keyboard or voice, you’re going to rank.

Pro Tip

On the Amazon environment, it’s called an Alexa Skill; in the Google environment, it’s called an Actions on Google app. The Actions on Google app allows you to develop … any manner of different things. Generally speaking, most people believe that the app will only be useful if the user knows to invoke it. However, with the Actions on Google app interface, working through dialogflow.com, you can enable implicit queries, which allows Google to serve up the answers from your app, even to users who are unaware of your app. 

So, let’s say you have an app on housing prices, “What’s the average price of housing in Boston?” Even though the user didn’t invoke your app, Google might pull the answer from your app and serve it, so that becomes like SEO.

Image

Google has been hinting that SEOs should be focusing a bit more on image search over the past few months. With an image box appearing above organic listings and image search previews that direct users to the page hosting the image, image optimization should be a regular component of your SEO regimen.  

Pro Tip

Using original images, alt text, having good neighboring text that is descriptive underneath the image, having the image on a relevant page and on a relevant site — all these things are our ranking factors for image search.

In addition, consider the impact that images have on user experience. Try to get your file size as low as possible without sacrificing the quality that users expect; this will help keep your load times under control. If your images also appear below-the-fold, consider implementing lazy loading so that users don’t have to wait for all your images to load before they can begin engaging with your content.

You’ll also want to stick to common file formats such as JPEG and PNG for standard images, SVG for vector graphics and GIF for simple animations so that search engines can index your images. You can even mark up images with structured data to give search engines more information.

Local

Optimizing for local visibility in search is more important than ever. 

“So, if you’re in hospitality, or in restaurants or some specialized area, then there’s typically going to be a directory site or a couple of sites that people will use — TripAdvisor is an obvious one — to find information.”

The Google My Business platform continues to add features. Claiming and optimizing your  listing will help establish your presence on Google Search and Maps. You can update your business information, upload photos and manage reviews — a local ranking factor. 

Having a presence on Yelp (or directory site that’s most pertinent to your industry) may drive traffic directly to your door. “But, from a Google SEO perspective, the reason you want to be built out on Yelp and those other directories is because they’re going to rank — they’re going to outrank your own website in most instances and get the benefit of the authority that those domains have.

You need to make sure that your data is in Yelp, to some degree, and Yext as well, to be discoverable on the Alexa devices.

In Google Home and also on the Assistant for smartphones, if you’re a service professional, they’re only going to feature you if you have a Google Guaranteed badge or you’re coming through one of their authorized partners.

Pro Tip

“So far, we have not found that the content used in the Google Post has any impact on ranking, (for example: posting about “dog bites” doesn’t make you rank higher for “dog bite lawyer) so I would suggest focusing your posts on keywords you’re already ranking for that could use a boost in click-through-rate.

Video

If you are pursuing video, you can not only do things to try and get your video to rank in Google search, but YouTube.com is actually a very significant search engine. 

If your audience is on YouTube.com, average watch time is a crucial ranking factor — especially if you want your content to show as a suggested video. To help viewers find your videos, make sure to insert the keywords you’ve researched in your title, description and tags.

Add your own transcripts to provide YouTube with more information about your content and ensure that your transcripts are accurate for your viewers. 

You’ll also want to create an original thumbnail image that resonates with your audience, convincing them to click through and raise your view count.

Engagement is also a consideration for YouTube SEO, so you’ll want to find creative ways to encourage your viewers to subscribe, share, comment and give your video a thumbs up.

If the primary aim of your video content is for users to discover you through the main Google search results page, do your research and verify that the video carousel appears for queries you wish to rank for. Even if it doesn’t, your content may still surface within the video tab. 

In Google, the ranking algorithms for videos are startlingly like it is for other web pages. It looks like the same sort of relevancy algorithms are in play. Does your page with the video have links to it? Does it accumulate some level of PageRank and these sorts of things?. 

There’s more you can do than simply embedding your video on a relevant page and then optimizing that page: you can also add a transcript directly on the page and mark up the video with structured data to give search engines more context and increase the odds that your video surfaces as a rich result.

Regardless of length, your primary goal should always be to create content that is right for your audience. Videos that are at least five minutes in length tend to perform better and have a higher chance of ranking in Google searches.

Keep tabs on your video performance through YouTube’s analytics and Google Search Console’s video reports.