The Future of Search: 5 Tech Trends That Will Impact SEO

One thing to be sure of is that search engine optimization continues to be a fluid landscape that keeps on changing. From the wild west days of SEO where anything goes, to algorithmic updates like Panda and Penguin, to the now heightened importance of mobile optimization, SEO has had a huge impact on how online and brick and mortar companies do business.

As SEO continues to alter some methodologies with time, so too has technology been continuously changing over the decades. Due to social media marketing, content marketing, and the switch to mobile search, among other developments, previous SEO practices—the good and the bad, like keyword stuffing content, link buying, and over-optimizing meta tags—are seeing their end in a new era. This article will look at five tech trends impacting SEO as we know it today.

Mobile Search

This year, 80% of all adults on the planet will own a smartphone. That means more and more people will be conducting internet searches for information, products, and services from mobile devices. Optimizing for mobile search is essential if you want to boost your ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs).

In 2016, reports revealed that almost 58% of searches in the U.S. were mobile searches. Last year, due to the considerable number of mobile searches conducted daily, Google created a mobile-first index, which receives updates more often than its desktop index. Mobile search technology is undoubtedly the foundational technology that enables visual and voice search.

Visual Search

Many Gen Z and older millennials want to see the emergence of more visual search technology. In a recent study, 62% of 18–34-year-olds wished to have the capabilities on their mobile devices to identify and discover items they would like to buy or that inspire them in some way. There are several different forms that visual search can take, such as platforms that allow consumers to snap pictures using the camera function on their mobile devices. At the same time, image recognition software displays search results for similar items.

Another study by Intent Lab showed that 36% of respondents had used visual search before, so the need for visual search technology will become increasingly more vital in 2020 and beyond. An example of visual search technology includes Google Lens, which has been used 1 billion times already. Another site making use of visual search is Pinterest, which has 600 million visual searches per month. Optimizing for visual search should not be overlooked, as people want the capability to perform visual searches for things such as nutritional information, shopping, recipes, directions, business reviews, and translations, among other things.

Voice Search

Since the conception of voice recognition, technology has improved immensely. Google's rate of accuracy is said to be 95%. Although voice technology serves a function in many of the devices under the Internet of Things (IoT) umbrella, like the smart thermostat or smart television, the primary instruments through which people perform voice searches are currently either a smart speaker or smartphone.

According to Think with Google, 20% of searches on Android devices and Google's mobile app are made by people using voice. In addition, 31% of all smartphone users use voice at least once per week.Gartner, the global research and advisory firm, predicts that this year, 30% of people's searches will be on devices without a screen, which implies a rise in voice search. According to ComScore, this year, half of all online searches will be conducted using voice technology.

AMP

Accelerated mobile pages are Google's masterly innovations developed for mobile users. AMP is essentially an open-source way of helping companies create mobile-friendly web pages that users can open quickly and with lasting impressions in their minds. Tech is helping to make businesses worth engaging with from a consumer perspective and make them easily accessible.

AMP eliminates the wait for loading time of pages on a site, and users can get the information they need much more quickly. In addition to mobile friendliness being one of the determining factors considered in Google's mobile-first index, page speed is an increasingly prominent ranking factor that relates to SEO. A site won't perform well in SERPs without tech like AMP, which has three components: JavaScript, Cache, and HTML.

AMP pages use a simple version of HTML for quick and light loading. Google AMP's cache system stores the AMP content and holds it as a preference for different search results. Lastly, the AMP JavaScript pages get merged with the unstructured loading system that handles the presentation of each element of the web pages for proper loading.

Machine Learning and AI

Machine learning (ML) has had an impact on content creation and keyword use by business owners because, by using artificial intelligence (AI), Google has been able to identify and rank websites based on their on-site information. Machine learning will help those working with SEO because they then have the opportunity for their content to rank based on quality and decent use of keywords. With ML included in its search products, Google's algorithms can determine the quality of SEO content based on sentence structure, keyword density, and phraseology to deliver to users the content most relevant to them.

If you want to rank high for quality, you also have to consider the search intent of your target audience. By searching for the keywords you want to use in your content, Google's algorithms take the guesswork out of determining the general intent most users have when looking up those specific keywords in their searches.

Another area of SEO benefiting from Google's AI software is link building. The tech can analyze page links and discern their value and relevancy to the content on the page and the keywords. Since SERP ranking is mostly established by the AI technology Google has implemented, you can recognize the impact of AI on SEO when valuable and relatable links get included within core content.

SEO doesn't appear to be going anywhere. However, the way people put SEO into action may see alterations and shifts with time. Nevertheless, as long as technological advances continue, new trends will never cease to arise.

R. Antonio Matta

The Future of Search: 5 Tech Trends That Will Impact SEO