"AR is here to influence how businesses are going to promote their products and services. Soon, how they optimize for search rankings."
Technology is continuously paving the road for greater things both online and off. With the progression of augmented reality, things are going to get far more interesting.
As more brands start to use augmented reality, there’s a good chance that it will start to affect the way that users browse the web.
In a sense, augmented reality (AR) and search engine optimization (SEO) may eventually develop a strong symbiotic relationship. As AR uses online data to improve its offerings, SEO benefits by creating a more engaged audience.
How will these two merge successfully in the year to come?
Search Engines Will Support Visual Search and Use AR
All major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, employ primary search results techniques. This is how web pages and other content, such as videos or local listings, are displayed and ranked, depending on what that specific search engine considers to be of most relevance to users. We are talking about organic search here, not paid search (SEM).
Judging from the continuous growth of augmented reality, it’s no wonder if your website content will soon be crawled, indexed, and ranked higher in SERPs for AR-based content via visual search. Everything from digital content and activity, to offline advertising, physical locations, brand and product photos and images will someday be searched through AR.
Businesses and forward-thinking SEO professionals will need to include the augmented reality technology into their content marketing strategies.
Augmented reality is beneficial for brands that are searching and fighting to be first and foremost both in their industry and in SERPs. Being friendly to AR only improves the impact products and services have in search results. Before long, people will specifically look for things online that they can only see in a simulated 3-D environment.
Content Connects the Dots Between Augmented Reality and SEO
Content is again king. Content is king in AR, just as it is in any other medium. Augmented reality content can take various forms, such as video, social sharing, reviews, 3D objects, usually available all-in-one search engine result page or advertorial.
In order to stand out, content marketers are investing a lot in visual content such as videos, images, and infographics. But it’s time to consider Augmented Reality in your content marketing strategy.
Sporting good augmented reality technology and smartly optimized content will both please your audience and boost your content up in SERPs. This way you encourage your customers to participate in the AR experience by contributing with content in real-time. Augmented reality is where content is not only provided by the brand, but also by the customer, both online and offline, and where positive content probably has the biggest impact of them all.
Better Augmented Reality User Experience Leads to Better Ranking
Creating the best user experience possible is already a vastly important aspect of boosting sales and leads. It’s all about delivering quality materials on your site that users want. The same element drives augmented reality.
Like building a website, the AR experience is going to require information-rich content. It’s this access to data that often works to improve a user’s perception of a brand or website.
What does this mean for you as a business? It means you have to put effort into delivering every bit of detail possible in terms of data, especially if you plan on creating your own AR experiences to enhance your business model.
For instance, a car dealership could show the make, model and year of a car in a random parking lot and display the information on someone’s smartphone. But why stop there? Boosting the experience would include adding the blue book value, available colors, miles per gallon and more information that may influence a person’s decision to buy it.
Of course this is going to depend on the type of business you operate. However, it’s details such as these that help boost sales and leads. And improving user experience strengthens any SEO campaign.
The Impact Augmented Reality Has on SEO
Mentions, reviews, links, ratings, all in a new form – this is what AR offers to the world of SEO.
Given the novelty and hype of this AR madness, people are naturally drawn to brands who take the risk (or the opportunity) to include AR into their content marketing strategy. This is why AR triggers brand awareness, something many businesses fight for and with.
Augmented reality cultivates a wow-factor. It presents a new search and information-ready ecosystem to organic search professionals.
AR-impacted SEO agencies can get actionable data and deep insight into customer behavior, thus knowing how to launch more engaging and successful marketing strategies across search engines.
Augmented reality isn’t supposed to replace your existing SEO efforts, but to expand your audience and to engage them to an extent they’ve never experienced before.
Talking about the audience, Adobe recently published a survey made on AR app users to see how many fans are there.
The numbers are continuously growthing, so this is a clear indicator of something that triggers people’s attention and makes them walk on that digital path – use it to drive them to you – as one of your communication and content means.
Why Should Small Businesses Be Thinking Ahead?
The actual future of augmented reality in SEO is uncertain. However, many brands and developers are pushing the limits of how these two affect each other.
Perhaps some of you will have read through this article and thought ‘But I’m a small business, this isn’t really within my marketing scope.’ The reality is, if you aren’t ready for AR when AR becomes mainstream, you’re undoubtedly going to be left behind. Local SEO is more important than ever before and it’s time that local businesses start investing resources into optimizing their organic search results.
Engage Customers in Every Reality
It’s always best to be aware of how the latest technologies can revolutionize your business. By thinking of how AR will affect your business today, companies will be equipped for when augmented reality dominates the world of search tomorrow.
Stay ahead of the curve, contact us today or schedule a free demo to get a foot up on your competitors and prepare to reap the rewards as an early adopter!
