IoT & SEO – How IoT is Reshaping SEO & What are the Latest Trends?

IoT and SEO are significant strategies for the growth and development of business. Today, brands are beginning to realize that they can’t ignore the place of technology in their progress. In order to reach out to more audiences and make optimum revenue, they have to respond positively to the current digitalization trends.

SEO has been a major boost in widening the audience and reach of brands. It has contributed immensely in bringing customers closer to online businesses. According to a 2015 research article by ResearchGate, IoT is a revolutionary technology that enhances the power of connectivity between devices. This makes communication faster and effective. Imagine a situation where IoT works with concepts of SEO for your business’ growth. Essentially, it’s a collaboration of digital ideas to bring out exponential growth and development in your brand. The fact of the matter is that IoT technology is reshaping SEO and you can use it to your advantage. Here are ways through which IoT technology is transforming SEO.

The Use of Voice Commands

A fundamental feature of SEO has been keywords. Businesses invest their time and money to get it right in the keywords phenomenon. By knowing and using the right keywords, they are able to attract and capture their target audience. There are short, medium, and long keywords. If you ask SEO experts, they will tell you that keywords account for a significant percentage of the success that SEO campaigns bring.

However, with emerging trends and technology in IoT, there is notable transformation in the way SEO is working for brands. In other words, there is a transformation in the way the performance of searches is taking place. There is a trend making way for the use of voice commands instead of long keywords. This means that notable quantities of searchers are going to employ voice commands rather than the use of keywords.

Today, IoT devices are making searches and communicating with other devices. The implication of this is that there is more emphasis on voice commands than it is for long keywords. So what does this do for SEO strategy? Indeed, as technology changes, there has to be transformations in the way brands operate. In response to this change, the SEO content that brands make have to fit into the new trend. The design of the new content has to be set in a way that allows devices to process it well. There is a shift of focus to have websites and web pages optimized to comprehend voice searches and commands. In this respect, it’s high time you responded to the new trend of technology that allows less keywords and more voice commands. Do not limit your SEO to the use of long keywords only. Take up the challenge and optimize your web pages for IoT technology to get optimal outcomes from your SEO campaigns.

However, it is worth noting that the use of keywords doesn’t become irrelevant because of the transformation that IoT is bringing today. Remember, there are still a significant number of searches that are people oriented. For this particular audience segment, leverage the power of creative keywords to attract and capture more people to your brand.

SERP Formatting is Changing

Clearly, the emphasis on IoT in the SEO world is introducing changes aimed at broadening the thinking and creativity of businesses. If you operate on the online space, one thing you have to avoid is rigidity. You have to be responsive to the changes that happen often. SERP formatting has been and continues to be a major aspect of SEO campaigns. This has to do with how a website looks. The layout of your website plays a big role in determining how you attract and retain your target audience. But, with devices being part of those accessing your website, do you need to care so much about how your website looks?

IoT technology simply means that the previous emphasis on website formatting for SERPs is not as strong as it was. For example, devices won’t need to know your homepage’s font to access content from your site. Unlike a person who can make choices about your brand based on how your website looks, devices don’t care about that.

This has a huge implication on digital marketers. The entry of IoT technology in the SEO world means that marketers have to make major decisions about the visual appeal of websites. The truth of the matter is that there are people who are still using phones and laptops to access websites and the content in them. Remember, for such an audience, aesthetics are significant. They have to find a website appealing for them to use content. So, the big question for marketers is what they need to do to accommodate both the rise in IoT technology and the audience still using phones to search for content.

They should examine their audience and see what devices they are using. If they are using phones and tablets to access websites, formatting for SERPs is something they should consider. However, if your target audience is more into IoT technology, the prudent step to take is to shift to strategies that accommodate these mediums. Find ways that will be compatible with these IoT mediums. You may have to tone down on the fancy features that make websites appealing. At the end of the day, you have to be flexible and find strategic ways of balancing your fundamental B2B SEO strategies so that you don’t get left out of the trend.

Certainly, SEO and IoT are practices and technologies that we can’t ignore today. As online business owners are looking for ways of expanding their target audiences, it’s high time that they found ways of getting the best from each of them. It is hard to ignore the transforming power of IoT, but it’s also important to remember that conventional SEO strategies are still impactful. The prudent action to take is to be ready to accommodate the latest trends of IoT while maximizing on current SEO efforts.

Name: Mike Khorev

Title: SEO expert

Bio: Mike Khorev is a lead SEO expert at Nine Peaks Media a B2B SaaS SEO agency that helps software, IT,  technology, and startup companies rank on the first page of Google. Mike offers expert advice on optimizing your company website the right way through performance-based on and off site SEO, inbound marketing, conversion rate optimization, search engine marketing and many other online practices.