Smart speakers are the same size as a Bluetooth speaker and are voice-operated. They can order your groceries, set reminders and alarms and help you create a playlist. Research by Gartner Edison says that 75 percent of American homes will have at least one or even multiple smart speakers in the home by 2020. The technology is growing in popularity and they are already available from Google and Amazon, and talks of Samsung and Apple joining the market have proven to be true. So how will the popularity of smart speakers affect SEO? One way we do know is that we ask questions and talk differently when we speak. For example, we can google search "inbound marketing and creative strategy", but we may ask our helpful new home assistant, Amazon's Alexa, in a full sentence: "Alexa, find me a company near me that can help me with creative strategy and inbound marketing for my business." Alexa also won't show potential customers three pages of results, and will probably only show the first result. So while the same keywords will be recognised, the competition may get tougher, as we must now compete for the attention of the smart speaker. This is more reason to post blogs with good SEO and to do it often, as this will keep your content and your brand relevant to search results. It's also in your best interest to keep up to date with this technology and how it's changing over time, because we may be safe now but the future is still unpredictable. And with tech's biggest competitors like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and Amazon fighting for a share in the market, the race is on to change and improve what is possible in the home. Time to prepare Machine learning and AI will provide us with more options in the future, but in what direction the online marketplace will go is anybody's guess. Paid advertising is a popular source of revenue for Google and social media sites, so they won't jeopardise that to win the race to the smart speaker market. However, prepare to learn and to be surprised when it comes to this technology and your SEO. Remember to check tech websites to keep up with the latest news on smart speakers, SEO and google algorithms. And last but not least, get your keywords and SEO to the top of the searches, as this will be effective no matter what way the technology industry goes in. Contact the team at Mark 2 Creative today to learn more about SEO and creative strategies.