Move over text search, visual search is fast becoming the new normal for 2021 and beyond. This goes hand in hand with the voice search facility offered by Google and other search engines. However, a leading SEO Company Canberra has said that visual search received a boost after the release of Google Lens and Pinterest Lens. This introduces a radical shift in the way you develop, strategize and implement SEO. For now and in the future, you will need a digital marketing company that understands the ramifications of visual searches and, importantly, knows how to leverage it for your company. Learn more about visual search and its impact on SEO.
Visual search defined
Even today, people still type in a description of the item to find images on the web. The only problem is that results will show images, products, and sites that match the text description.
Then there is reverse image search in which you use an actual image as the starting point to visual search. You upload the image, and the search engine’s AI and content-based image retrieval will show more precise results. It is akin to the voice search feature of Google that listens to an audio clip and displays results. It is so powerful that if you, for instance, input a song track in the voice search, the result will show all related data like the singer’s name, the year in which it was produced, and so on.
The third type of search lets you capture an image using your smartphone camera and search for something similar.
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Current advancements in visual search
Google, as is to be expected, leads in visual search development with a backbone of AI. Its Google Lens is one of the best image recognition technologies. You can use images in Google Lens to identify plants, animals and products, and more. Google Goggles works in a slightly different way. The app captures images and lets you search for something similar. Alternatively, it can use an image from the gallery and look for a match online.
Pinterest, a huge depository of user-submitted images on this social media platform, also offers a visual search feature. You use the camera feature of Pinterest to snap a picture of a product, and Pinterest will show results for similar products available online.
All this is good, but how does it impact SEO?
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Visual search and eCommerce
To start with a few figures. Of the 2 billion searches on Pinterest, over 600 million are visual searches, and 48% of users are searching for products to buy. It is one step ahead of voice searches in which you can tell Siri or Amazon to search for some item of interest to you. The results of the voice search are likely to be mixed. However, Amazon’s camera search permits you to use augmented reality to visualize the product in your home. This is significant for now and for the future.
62% of Millenials now prefer visual search, 60% of GenZ are on social media looking at images to discover brands, and 70% wish to buy from that platform without jumping over to the eCommerce site. Instagram particularly favors images and permits showcasing your brands here. Just think how SEO optimizing your Instagram pictures would drive more customers to you when they use visual searches and come across exactly the product they need. If you can do it on your smartphone, you need not type in the product’s name. This is what GenZ is doing and will do in the future. SEO of must mutate to accommodate visual search as well as voice search to help your company stay on top.
Image, a couple of years from now, almost everyone could be using visual search as the shortcut to find a product of their choice online. SEO that sticks only to text will certainly not work.
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More emphasis on visuals
Visual search, along with voice search, introduces a tectonic shift in the way you will design websites as well as use content. Content is king, they say but maybe not anymore in this great age of visuals. Your typical website may see pictures predominate. Maybe inclined content sites may decline, and sites like Pinterest and Instagram will reign supreme. Users may well use voice commands along with images for searches in the future. Your digital marketing company should be ready to modify the strategy to live up to expectations and be found.
- Emphasis on pictures with high clarity and with different camera angles
- Use of optimized keywords and alt text
- Use of image-descriptive keywords, titles, and headings
- Optimization of image size and quality for mobile and desktop
No language barriers
Text content used in SEO had a huge disadvantage: You were limited by the great language barrier. Not so with images. Now, and subsequently, images will do the talking in visual search. A person in Russia or China who does not know English can find products on American sites, and Americans or English-speaking people can find images on Russian or Chinese sites without the bother of translation. In a way, the scope of sales increases, provided your digital marketing company implements an effective Image SEO for your business.
In another way, visual searches may also help image copyright owners by helping them to find out who is using their image with or without authorization.
Visual search along with voice search is the future, and you just cannot avoid that wall. Engage specialist digital marketing companies to help you in the digital pictorial transformation and be right there when users use visual search to find products.
Visual search could also boost those for whom their “face is their fortune” since talent hunters can zero in on a model or a star using this feature in the future. By the same token, if someone is a known fraudster, their face may well do them in. Anyway, it is gung-ho time for SEO as visual search is set to go mainstream.