Voice SEO: How humanity has been technologically modified
An exploration on Search Engine Optimization, why humans have been optimized for search engines, my personal predictions for what has brought us to this point, and how SEO will likely progress well into 2025.
As an SEO Specialist, I have grown more privy to user search behavior in the past few years. And as a Millennial, using the computer has been second-nature for me since I was 5 years old. So how are the two related?
The way we communicate to our devices used to be much different than how we talk to other humans.
My work presents me many opportunities to learn about new industries as I perform necessary research for their marketing strategies. What I have found is that different generations of people search online differently. Generational marketing is definitely a thing, but this takes it beyond a level I realized.
Other SEO professionals may be surprised to know that out of all the generations, Gen Z uses the most amount of words in their search queries. The youngest generation talks the most to their devices. Well, that should be fairly obvious. But how does this affect everyone else?
Modern technology, even starting from as early as the microwave, began a general expectation for things to happen faster. People were more willing to sacrifice quality of their food if it meant saving some time, even at the expense of their health. Now, every household has a microwave, and that frame of mind has passed on with it.
When the television was introduced to the average American household, there was an outcry from people who were against putting them in their homes, claiming that it was a “cultural wasteland” that would make “society into an audience that is dependent on the need for constant entertainment.” So look at us now. Was that prediction correct?
Almost every household has some version of a Siri, Alexa, Cortana… there’s so many it’s starting to sound like Mambo №5.
Point is this — Artificial intelligence grows more intelligent with every interaction. Humans’ dependence on technology grows with each passing generation. And our youngest humans already speak more to their devices than to their own parents. In an article by Harvard Medical School, as reported by the findings of the Common Sense Media Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight, “kids 2 to 8 are spending about an hour a day on a mobile device, […] 19% use them in restaurants, and 14% use them while eating meals, cutting into conversations they might have had with family and friends.”
It is clear from user search behavior patterns, at least to me, that when tablets are put into babies’ hands, both the device and the child are learning from each other. Technologically modified humans.
If that expression feels like a stretch for you, dear reader, then I’ll clarify why I’ve just invented the term.
After integrating this accelerated technology, humans do need constant entertainment, younger generations do have shortened attention spans, hyperactivity, and restlessness. A 2018 JAMA study indicates that social media “might” be associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD.) The issue is that because there’s not enough data, we cannot say for certain that technology is a cause of behavioral problems such as learning disorders, anxiety, and depression.
But according to Discover Magazine, “During adolescence, the brain is developing neural pathways that underlie impulse control, attention, planning, and other higher-level functions.” Researcher Adam Leventhal, a psychologist and professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine in USC, suggests that “exposure to smartphones, where our impulses are immediately rewarded with likes and comments, could interfere with teens’ ability to delay gratification — which is often associated with ADHD.”
Remember the television?
Since it was invented, how many babysitters have sat a child in front of the television for hours? How many parents?
As a human, I fear that if we wait any longer to gather data, the changes to our DNA will be permanent. It may already be irreversible, and we may already be facing the consequences via less social interactions, and more learning disabilities.
The point of technology is to make our way of life better. Tasks that are inefficient for humans to perform in the modern age should be automated, to give people more comfort or a more fulfilling way of life.
Is this the version of comfort and fulfillment that Americans thought would be the result of all this fast technology?
Back to present day: Pew Research Center conducted a teen survey in 2018 which found that nearly “60 percent of teens reported feeling either anxious, lonely, or upset” when they didn’t have their smartphone in their pocket. According to author Alex Orlando, writer of Kids Are Growing Up Wired — and That’s Changing Their Brains, “even they seem aware that they’re probably checking their smartphones a little too much.”
Thankfully, these teens’ are still connected enough to their inner conscience which just knows this isn’t healthy in the long-run. Unfortunately for many adults, we subscribe to this heavily-marketed version of reality even if it goes against what used to be called instincts.
Human-engineered instincts are being rewritten in favor of what is technologically-intuitive. And I mean, physically being rewritten. Social patterns that have existed throughout human evolution is being stunted.
In November 2019, John Hutton, a pediatrician and researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, conducted a study on the neurobiological risks of phone screens to growing brains. “A study of preschoolers’ brains using MRI scans found that screen time changed the structure of the organ itself. Higher screen use was linked to lower amounts of white matter, the fibrous tissue that connects different parts of the brain. These connections support the development of emerging abilities like literacy and language skills.”
With our brief history lesson, we know that this did not start with Gen Z. The same brains that are teaching the machines how we communicate, have been modified by technology from birth. And then the modified humans are returning the favor and making technology more human-like.
Babies may be using tablets before they can even say “Hey Siri,” but no one seems to be doing any studies on the parents themselves. Or parents’ parents. We seem to have glazed over everyone else who has brought us to this point, because the Internet is such an obvious behavior changer. But in the 1950’s, human behavior was different in almost every way. Humans have fundamentally changed into a more pleasure-seeking, less impulse-controlled society influenced and monitored by the same technology that is being created by our wanton, uninhibited impulses.
Like the early untrained website ChatterBot, machines started off with no knowledge of how to communicate with humans. Each time a human entered a statement, the machine would document the statement into its own library, and save its own reply too. As the ChatterBot received more input from different humans, the number of responses it was able to reply increased. And the accuracy of each response in relation to the original input statement also increased.
The machine-learning nature allows it to improve its own knowledge of possible responses as it interacts with humans and other sources of informative data. That same software is used by developers to create more chatbots to automate conversations with users today. Conversational A.I. is, in my opinion, generative copywriting.
Good copywriting, and I mean really good copywriting, is more expensive than design. It’s also a lot tougher to pull off.
Like good design, when copywriting is good — nobody notices. You are experiencing what is meant to be experienced, not put off by the roadblock of robotic sentences that don’t feel human to read. That’s how our ability to search is improving, because we’re equipping the help of artificial intelligence to help us organize and regurgitate all the data that exists now. All while making it sound human.
This A.I. technology is already shaping our behavior toward these devices. We personalize them, give them human job titles, and they continue to learn more about us after every interaction. With the standardization of conversational A.I. home systems, or “personal assistants,” it has become mainstream to have a microphone constantly monitoring voices in your home, for ease, efficiency, and connectivity. Better than having a singular monopoly on information, this technology is shared between the leading tech giants — with Siri (Apple), Voice (Google), Alexa (Amazon), and Cortana (Microsoft).
Combine this with a younger generation putting more of their lives online, and the once prevalent warning of “Don’t post personal information on the Internet” being totally ignored or non-existent in modern thinking (Because why would you want to keep your life private?) and we face a future in which this technology knows human behavior more than humans inherently know themselves.
Or, we face a more connected reality because technology truly is learning us. If the way we use technology is more like talking to a human, have we technically enhanced the human experience?
Which brings us up to speed, to the present day of Search Engine Optimization.
We still use keywords for search, but long-tail keywords will become more widely used as the years progress. It’s less “barbers near me” and more “find me the closest barber that does fades.” Just like previous SEO tactics, utilizing synonyms and customer profiling helps determine all possible queries. However, as people continue speaking to their phones rather than type into them, search engines are going to receive long-tail keywords that are structured more like sentences and commands.
Using FAQ pages for these type of queries will help any page be prepared in Voice SEO. It’s important to get in this game now, because once Voice SEO is a thing of the past… My SEO prediction is that cameras will be our main form of consuming information by 2025.
It makes sense especially after looking at the bigger picture. Just like our society integrated from constantly keeping a device on our person, to creating wearable technology, it eventually led to people getting excited and throwing parties for microchip implants. Such a thought would have completely horrified someone living before the television was invented.
Technology already listens to us, and most people have accepted that the government is always watching (I still want to thank you for even trying, Edward Snowden). Exciting developments in eye tracking software definitely makes our lives easier, and it also makes sure that every micro expression on the face can be monitored... for efficiency of course. (Doesn’t anyone remember reading 1984?)
The only logical next step is for technology to start watching us too.
When we get to that point, optimizing for search engines is going to be an entirely different frontier. We are forming the foundations for it now through Voice SEO tactics, and every sentence we add to the sea of content now is what tomorrow’s technology will learn from. Is this the path that humanity should be going down? My personal opinion is that we can’t analyze a path when we’re still walking in it. But we can analyze the past to guess the future.
“The more you hear about technology, the more you learn about technology, the less apprehensive you get about technology,” says Swedish Biohax International chipping firm founder, Jowan Osterlund.
We know this is true, because it took 30 years for the television to go from mainly mocked to mainstream. From the invention of the first fully-electronic TV system in 1927, to every American household having a TV by the end of the 1950’s.
Except that now, the more we learn about technology, the more it is learning about us too.
