Google has long been able to serve up high-quality written word and visual content, but it now wants to make it easier for people to discover audio content in SERPs.
Podcasts and similar forms of content are increasing the power of audio in brand messaging. Google’s Zack Reneau-Wedeen recently revealed that the tech giant is now intent on prioritising audio in search results, which will finally move the concept of SERPs beyond text, videos and images.
He added: “Right now Google is really good at giving you text and video related to your search query. With all the amazing work podcasters are publishing each day, there’s no good reason why audio isn’t a first-class citizen in the same way.”
Making audio content searchable is the end goal, but how exactly will Google implement such a feature? It could incorporate podcast metadata into the results so a user can access audio when it enters a particular topic or term into the search engine. Google would also have to improve its understanding of the audio content in certain mediums and formats.
Reneau-Wedeen added that this was an element that Google has performed extremely well for text articles, in addition to images and structured data including maps. He claimed that Google can assist with audio as well, citing that audio possesses the potential to aid users to discover optimal content for them at that moment – a significant improvement on the way it works today.
If audio SEO did indeed make its debut in the coming years, it could enable brands to experiment with new ways of utilising audio to engage with consumers, such as spoken word articles.
