Voice Recognition, IoT and the Future of SEO Marketing
One of the major drivers in this push towards universal connectivity has been voice recognition/virtual assistant technology, spearheaded by household names such as Amazon Echo/Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant. These technologies use “wake words” to connect users to cloud systems that allow them to perform a multitude of operations, such as controlling devices in their home and performing internet searches and purchases. While these technologies have enabled users with greater ease of access, the transition towards short commands these are designed to handle will have a major impact on SEO practices. As users begin to integrate voice assistants into their lives to a greater degree, it will become increasingly more vital for companies to write not only for readers and search engines, but for voice recognition technologies.
This change has already begun at Google where last year, in collaboration with schema.org, a “speakable” specification was added to search results which gives preference to pages that contain properly formatted excerpts which allow Google Assistant to read a relevant part of a news piece to users in response to a question. While the potential implications across other platforms have been less clear, it is easy to imagine how these increasingly shorter and more precise interactions with devices, which often lead users directly to apps such as Amazon without pouring through search engine results, will further limit the space for advertisers to reach consumers.
Although the rise of the IoT has widely been viewed as the ushering in of a new era in data collection, allowing companies to process and analyze data on levels never before thought possible, as with all disruptions it will inevitably leave many companies playing catch up to adapt to rapid change. While the new specifications designed for voice recognition technology are still in the nascent stage, limited mainly to product reviews and news sources in the case of Google, companies who adapt early on and stay ahead of these changes will be best suited to take full advantage of the new opportunities brought on by these technologies.
