How the increasing popularity of voice search is helping redefine SEO in 2019

Google Voice Search was launched back in 2012, but it’s only been in the 12-18 months that people have really started to sit up and listen. With the introduction of voice assistants such as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa, voice search has been pushed to centre stage for marketers. The growing popularity of voice assistants and the increased use of voice search has changed the dynamic of SEO roles. Now, more than ever, we have to think about things such as mobile optimisation, ranking for featured snippets, schema and PageSpeed. People are searching differently for things for the first time since Google came on the scene and as a result, we have to change the way in which things can be found. Keyword research, for example, is taking on a completely different focus - keywords are longer, more conversational and highlight user intent in a way we’ve never seen before. People are accessing and searching for content in multiple ways, at multi times.  We’re using everything from traditional desktop computers through to smart watches and, increasingly, voice search to discover new brands, find solutions to our problems and to research and buy products. From our own research at BrandContent, we’ve found that more than a fifth of UK adults use voice search several times a day – and the majority of those early adopters are millennials or adults aged 45 – 54.