Search is no longer a straight line: social SEO and multimodal search

From one path to many

For a long time, the journey was predictable: a person typed a question into Google, clicked a result and decided. Today it spreads across several channels, in any order. Younger generations use TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to search for products, services, places and tutorials. Voice assistants and tools that search from a photo have changed the way people ask.

For businesses, this means being found requires coordinated presence — an orchestration of channels, not isolated actions on each one.

Social SEO: when the social network is the search engine

Social networks have their own search, and it works with words, like any search engine. What you say in the video, write in the caption and put in the title influences which searches the content appears in.

• Use the words your client would use to look for your service — in what you say, in the caption and in the on-screen text.
• Answer real questions in short, objective videos.
• Keep the same name, description and website link on every profile.
• Send people who discovered you on social media to a page on your site that continues the conversation.

Conversational and visual searches

When someone asks out loud or searches with a photo, there's no exact keyword to match. The assistant needs to understand the context: who the business is, what it sells, where it is, how much it costs, whether it's open. This is where structured data stops being a technical detail and becomes decisive.

• Organization and local business: name, address, opening hours, service area.
• Products and services: description, price, availability.
• FAQ: ready-made answers for conversational questions.
• Images and videos: descriptive alt text, captions and transcripts.

The website is still at the center

Social networks, assistants and search engines take customers down different paths, but almost all of them pass through the website at some point — to confirm, compare or get in touch. A well-structured site is what gives the brand consistency across all these channels, and what machines use as the official reference about the business.