Adobe has launched AEM as a Cloud Service! With this, Adobe Experience Manager is being offered as a fully cloud-native CMS solution in a subscription-based offering.

This is a big encouragement for AEM fans who have been shying away from adopting the CMS due to the complexity in deployment and management. This move will enable more organizations, especially mid-sized companies and enterprise departments, to go ahead and get themselves this enterprise content management system to power their experience engine.

You might have gathered by now some of the important changes that might be implemented to AEM. However, there are more specific changes that Adobe is bringing forth. Let’s look at what AEM in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS) offering means for marketing and IT.

Availability

This change will usher in the era of version-less AEM. The existing annual or quarterly service pack release models will give way for a continuous release cycle. With Adobe taking most of the responsibility of the release process, AEM version upgrades will now be automatic and rapid. Businesses will benefit from a reduced spending of their valuable resources in carrying out upgrade and update projects even if they haven’t subscribed to the AEM Managed Services. Most performance enhancements, security fixes and product updates will be carried out automatically over-the-air (OTA). Customers will also receive an increased uptime with higher SLAs powered by the cloud agility of the reinforced AEM.

With marketers getting uninterrupted access to the latest fixes and enhancements without much dependence on IT, the experience game is set to be more competitive.

Scalability

AEM as a Cloud Service will come optimized for specific use cases to help you scale with changing business requirements. The shift to a pure cloud-native service lends the Adobe CMS the ability to dynamically monitor traffic and scale automatically within seconds to match changing requirement trends. This will dramatically reduce the operational responsibilities to adapt to changing trends as well as the load on the maintenance team to continuously monitor traffic and make changes. Additionally, you will not be required to copy all codes, content and configured state of your AEM instance to scale up to new upgrades. This enables marketers to focus on content and experience creation and delivery in an uninhibited manner.

Velocity

As well as the global community of technical experts to your rescue, AEM’s enterprise-tested best practices and default security rules will help you swiftly get on top of issues and fixes. The modern architecture ensures many of the manual processes involved in provisioning, setup and update are eliminated through automation. This empowers you to innovate faster through the cloud-native capabilities to aggressively reduce the time-to-market and drive higher ROI quickly.

Capability

With the adoption of a modern architecture, customers are set to achieve enhanced solution capabilities as part of the cloud benefits for a higher value realization. AEM will now be easier to optimize for business value and personalize per requirements.

Reliability

Equipped with built-in redundancy and proactive monitoring capabilities, you get robust protection against unpredictable cloud outages or disasters for improved performance. AEM as a cloud service brings automatic backup and improved disaster recovery models that offer stronger reliability.

Extensibility

The ability to integrate AEM with other solutions in the Marketing Cloud, Experience Cloud or other third-party solutions remains largely the same with open APIs. If there is anything to be expected in terms of extensibility, it is that integrating this CMS with marketing, analytics or commerce solutions will become even better and easier.

Other Benefits of AEM as a Cloud Service

A move from the on-premise model to a cloud-first solution will help you cut down the IT cost through automation of many of the complicated technical processes. With less pressure on organizations or marketing teams to depend on IT teams for routine tasks of version upgrade projects, performance enhancements or security fixes, digital marketers will be able to quickly move from content strategy ideation to execution.

How will AEM on Cloud Impact AEM Management?

The amount of activity involved in AEM deployment and management will be significantly lessened in the cloud-native CMS model. This is a major change in the adoption process of AEM and will make a big impact in operations. For marketers, authors and content publishers, this change will cut through the lengthy process of development to offer a quicker way to push marketing materials and campaign to market faster.

Leverage the Potential of AEM as a Cloud Service with Us

Harnessing the potential of cloud-native solutions is a mandate for forward-thinking businesses of today. Argil DX will help you explore and tap the benefits of AEM as a Cloud Service. Argil DX is a certified Adobe Solution Partner helping organizations adopt the latest solutions in digital through innovative approaches and end-to-end deployment capabilities.

With the growth of Voice Search, it is imperative to include the latest trends in your SEO best practices.

The Rapid Growth of Voice Search

Voice Search is no more technology for the future. It is technology for the present. Just in 2016, 55% of teens and 41% of adults were using voice search more than once a day. 

Voice Search now constitutes 20% of all mobile searches. In the eight years from 2008 to 2016, Voice Search grew 35x as technologies like Alexa, Google Voice Search, Siri, and Echo have continued to make massive impacts. Perhaps, it is no wonder then that the expectation is that 50% of all searches will be voice search by 2020.

(Perhaps we can include a graph of the growth of voice search over the years from a respectable web magazine or site in this space) 

What are the Reasons for the Growth of Voice Search? 

Many reasons can be adduced for this tremendous increase in the popularity of voice search. One is that voice search is faster than typing. A report showed that with voice search, you get 110-150 words per minute while you get 38-40 words per minute typing. Voice search is 3.7x faster than typing. In the same 2016 report, 78% of teens, and 63% of adults love voice search because it is faster. 

It is not just faster but more convenient. 56% of respondents in a survey were found to enjoy voice search because it eliminates the need for typing. Talking to your device is a simpler and more efficient way to get results as compared to typing, especially for long keywords. 

Another reason is the adaptation of voice search to mobile. 58% of voice search users are on mobile devices. Voice search constitute 20% of all mobile searches. Since mobile technology itself is growing, it only makes sense that voice search, closely tied to mobile technology, increases too. 

How is Voice Search Changing Digital Marketing?

The Voice Search revolution is creating huge impacts on digital marketing. This includes those in the E-commerce world as well as those in the services industry. 

The primary way this impact occurs is through Search Engine Optimization. Voice search like Google Voice and Amazon’s Alexa are changing the very nature of how people search for information. We are gradually moving towards a digital marketing landscape where conversations with machines will drive search. 

The Shift to Longer Keywords 

With Voice search, keywords are now longer and more conversational.  When people search using voice assistants, they tend to include more words in the search than when typing. Voice searches are more targeted and comprehensive. 

Similarly, voice searches are more conversational with the use of natural language. Instead of searching for strings of words that don’t form a complete meaning, people now use more complete phrases and questions to ask computers for specific (or at least more precise) results. 

Instead of searching for “SEO for E-commerce,” someone using voice search will more likely search for, “How can I use Search Engine Optimization to grow my E-commerce.” Or take another example. A voice search will more likely be, “where can I buy shoes in California” rather than “shoes in California.” Voice Search is changing the very nature of keywords. It is becoming more conversational and natural. 

The Change in the Display of Results 

The introduction of Knowledge Graphs and Featured snippets by Google is itself changing the way Google SERPS display results. It is not so surprising then that there was a 37% drop in organic clicks on the SERP. For example, for the search, “What is Alexa,” here is the Google SERP. 

The snippet on the right might have given me just the information I need and render clicking through any of the links on the SERP needless. It is the same with voice search. For the voice search, “how many countries in Africa?” here is the result: The answer is already “in my face” and clicking through any of the links is mostly needless. 

Voice Search and Your Keyword Research 

How then do you incorporate voice search into your Keyword Research?  

Use Long-tail Keywords 

With Voice searches, people are using more extended keywords. Therefore, it is essential to make use of long-tail keywords for your content.  

These long-tail keywords should be scattered in different places in the content. So, instead of just targeting “SEO for E-commerce,” you can focus on long-tail keywords like “useful SEO strategies for e-commerce stores” or “how can I make use of SEO for my e-commerce store.” 

Use More Question Keywords 

Most of the queries carried out in voice search are in question format. That is why question keywords are growing by 61% every year.  

Because Keywords with voice search are natural and conversational, they tend to include question keywords more often. As a result, it is essential to include question keywords as part of your Keyword Research. 

Keywords like, “where can I buy diving gear in Texas,” “how can I increase my organic traffic,” “who are the influencers in social media marketing,” what is the most useful SEO strategy for E-commerce,” are essential in a world of voice search. 

Use Natural Language Keywords 

Look for keywords that are conversational and complete a thought. Focus on natural language and not just plain keywords. Instead of “download stock photos,” you might consider, “best places to download stock photos.” 

Optimizing content for Voice Search 

But it does not stop at the level of keywords research. How do we then use our new set of keywords to optimize our content for Search Engines like Google Voice, Alexa among others? 

Write in Natural Language 

Use the natural language keywords that you have discovered in your content. More so, use them naturally. Learn to substitute robotic language with a more expressive and natural tone. 

Focus on writing for the people and not just the search engine. Write with your audience in mind. User-generated content and content that understands user intent is the future of content marketing. 

Have an FAQ Page 

Question keywords are becoming more popular; Google focuses on content that gives answers to user queries.  

The best way to ensure that you optimize your content for these question keywords is to include an FAQ page on your website. This page should give specific answers to questions along with your primary keyword.  

Apart from the general FAQ page on your website, you can optimize every content for these question keywords.  

For an article on “The importance of Content Marketing,” you can create subheadings like:  

How effective is content marketing for E-commerce stores? 

What are the best ways to use content marketing? 

What are the benefits of content marketing? Etc. 

When you give short and concise answers to such questions, you increase your chances to appear for voice searches as answer to these question and related questions.  

However, you don’t need to bother if your question is an exact match. A research study showed that less than 2% of voice search results had the exact keyword in the title. 

Optimize for Snippets 

Getting visibility on Google featured snippets is so essential. It is even more critical for Alexa and Google Home (they produce only one result per search). 

The featured snippet might be the only thing that the enquirer reads.  

Long-tail keywords trigger featured snippets the most. Therefore, using long tail keywords in long-form content is a good strategy to win in the “featured snippets race.” 

Featuring on these snippets can increase your traffic by 20-30% and Click Through Rate (CTR) by 300% 

Conclusion

The rise in Voice search technology will continue into the foreseeable future. Voice search is already affecting digital marketing, especially SEO.  

Businesses must begin to change the way they do keyword research. Similarly, they must start to optimize their content for voice search if they expect to gain from the voice search revolution.