The end of SEO. RIP SEO. The death of SEO. Oh boy. The recent discovery that Google is encrypting all search data has left SEO experts reeling but in the grand scheme of things, so what? Keyword data is one small part of SEO. Yes, it lets smart marketers understand what terms people are using to find their webpages. But SEO is so much more than keyword optimization. Companies like Hubspot coined the term “inbound marketing” and experts covering search marketing like MOZ have adopted this term and shifted how they position their tools away from “search marketing” and toward “content marketing” and “inbound marketing.” Why? Because “inbound marketing” better conveys the work that online marketers are doing to ensure the discoverability of their content and the distribution of that content through social networks.
Online marketers used to have access to more rich keyword data in Google Analytics but since 2011 that data has been obscured and labeled “Not Provided”. Yes it sucks. I was working for a client years ago to promote their teacher guides. These are activities and worksheets for teachers to use in the classroom. Funny enough there was limited traffic to the webpage featuring the guides but there was search traffic coming to the site using the term “reading guide.” I was able to see via the keyword data that I was using the wrong term. As soon as I corrected that, search visitors were finding the right content, and it was obviously of use to them because they downloaded the guides and often reshared the link on various resource sites and via social media. Google has limited marketers' access to that knowledge by now encrypting search data for users who are logged in and non-logged in users.
That announcement is disappointing but as Hubspot points out, marketers still have keyword data via Bing and Google Adwords. Plus if you can track the search queries people use on your website then that data can help with optimizing on-page content as well.
What does the loss of Google keyword data mean? Well comScore reports that Google.com has about 67% of search market share, Bing has 18%, and Yahoo has 11%. Although the remaining keyword data marketers can still access does not provide the full picture, at least it gives marketers some indication of which keywords are the most useful for driving traffic to a website. Plus there are tools like those offered by MOZ.com and Hubspot that can fill the gaps and allow marketers to extrapolate what's going on. Rand Fishkin from MOZ provides some examples in his Whiteboard Tuesday presentation “When Keyword (not provided) is 100 Percent of Organic Referrals, What Should Marketers Do?“
In the grand scheme of things, yes it sucks, but it's not the end of the world. It's not the end of SEO. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is not keyword optimization. It's not about stuffing keywords into the right places and tweaking the html code. If you think about SEO that way, then yes, the news is alarming. But if you are a smart marketer who stays on top of search trends, then you understand that SEO is really:
- Social cues
- External cues, and
- On-page cues
Below is a 20-minute overview of a full-length presentation that I give on Search Engine Optimization. The main take away is that keywords are a small part of the work that goes into SEO, and that there are many factors that are still within your control as a marketer, IT person or copywriter.
My suggestion: Export the search data you have currently. In Google Analytics, you might notice you can only see keyword data from Google for 3-month blocks. Use a custom audience to see Google Organic visitors, then export that keyword data while you still can.
Have a point to add? Pop it in the comment section.
UPDATE: Sept 26 Google announced the Hummingbird algorithm
And, if you need help with in-house training or would like a presentation on SEO, Google Analytics, Online Marketing or Website Optimization, talk to us about how we can tailor a presentation to your needs.
