How Digital Assistants Are Changing SEO

With digital assistants like Google Home on the rise, the tech-savvy folks among us naturally think about the daily benefits of these kinds of services. They make so many tasks that much easier, and streamline so many parts of our day in ways that can save a few minutes or a few bits of stress.

As it turns out, though, services like Google Home could have a huge effect on search engine optimization and SEO companies everywhere. More and more digital assistants in the average home mean fewer and fewer search queries will be manually typed into a browser and presented on search engine results pages, as more people use voice activation to search the things they care about.

How will this affect SEOs and internet marketing companies?

Types of Queries Affected

Right off the bat, we see that the effects might be relatively limited from a business monetization standpoint – most of the queries services like Google Home are managing aren’t down those lines.

For right now, there are actually only two major areas that most digital assistants are helping with where SEOs can be effective: Facts & Info and Local Guide. The former is what it sounds like: Basic answers to mostly simple questions about objective facts, from the length of a term in Congress to how the stock market finished up yesterday. The latter mostly deals with location services, and finding things in one’s area.

Many other areas that home assistants are most useful for really don’t have many potential SEO benefits.

Featured Snippets

The part of the SEO process that Google Home and other home assistants are most in tune with is featured snippets – they often display “answers” instead of “search results,” and these answers commonly come in the form of a featured snippet.

As such, SEO companies will be on alert to make sure their answer is the one showing up in the featured snippet as often as possible. If technology remains similar in this area for the conceivable future, this could become the new SEO arms race.

Blend Info and Promo

As we mentioned earlier, digital assistants are all about answers rather than search results – but who says an “answer” can’t also contain some promotional material? The new name of the game for SEOs in this area is crafting information that will show up in featured snippets for search queries, but which can still relay a few small bits of product information at the same time.

The reason for this is simple: As of now, Google Home simply reads the entire text present in the top featured snippet for a given query. You won’t get your company into that slot if you’re putting a novel there, but there’s a middle ground here where you can fit both a succinct answer and some promotional information in at the same time. Be creative!

Have questions about the new world of SEO with the rise of digital assistants, or need help with any part of the SEO or website design process? At SEOWerkz, our friendly and professional staff is standing by to help you.