PDA

View Full Version : The Future of Google SEO



vangogh
10-22-2013, 01:30 AM
If you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed Google has been making a lot of changes lately in how they rank web pages. An article I found recently takes a look at some of the changes to offer thoughts about where Google's heading. The article, 6 Major Google Changes Reveal the Future of SEO (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2301719/6-Major-Google-Changes-Reveal-the-Future-of-SEO) covers as you might guess 6 recent changes.


Not Provided - Google has removed a lot of keyword data in Analytics and will remove the rest before long
No PageRank Update Since February - PR used to update 3 or 4 times a year, but it looks like we may never see an update again
Hummingbird - an algorithm change that looks beyond keywords and more at conversational speech
Google+ - Google's social network seems to be playing a larger role in ranking
Authorship - a way to associate content on any site with the person who created it
In-Depth Articles - a new feature in search results calling attention to in-depth articles



The focus is moving away from tactical seo (increasing page rank, emphasis on keywords, etc.) and moving toward more strategic things like understanding the people who visit your site, creating the best content and experience you can for those people, becoming an authority on your subject, and becoming more visible across the web. In addition the emphasis is being placed on good site architecture, and semantic markup.

In some respects I don't like losing some of the information like the keyword data, because it can be a great help in understanding what people are searching for. On the other hand I know how to properly architect a site and I understand semantic markup and generally think the better we create content and build sites for real people the better the internet will be.

michelle222
10-22-2013, 10:05 AM
This is really a BIG change that it seemed the new process calls for a restart for all SEOs and marketers. Also, if I may add. The new SEO can be compared to the old way of doing advertisement- more of analyzing the target market- the behavior, trend, and how the brand/content impacts them.

vangogh
10-23-2013, 10:57 AM
Interesting comparison to advertising. I think Google does want to see people build brands online. A few years ago when in a discussion about spam online, Eric Schmidt said the following


Brands are the solution, not the problem," Mr. Schmidt said. "Brands are how you sort out the cesspool

The thought is when a company has built some kind of brand it's more likely you can trust them (something that isn't necessarily true, but perhaps where search spam is concerned). Google is looking for signals of trust. If you look at all the changes above, there's definitely a trust component to the last three. Moving away from keywords and PageRank is also a move away from two signals often used by search spammers, which ideally also improves quality.

The loss of PR is not big deal. I stopped paying attention to it a few years ago. Losing keyword data is a little harder to take, since I do find it valuable to know what words people generally use to find my site. However there are still ways to get something close to that data or at least ways to get the same general information.

Freelancier
10-23-2013, 11:21 AM
Are you saying that SEO "experts" will have to find another way to make money from unsuspecting clients? :)

Eliminating the step of fake-optimizing your site for a search engine and requiring the site to focus on optimizing for its users is going to be a big improvement in quality. If it actually works. Not a small feat and the number of false positives and false negatives are going to be headaches for marketing people.

KristineS
10-23-2013, 01:06 PM
Not sure I love the more emphasis on Google + thing. I think Google+ can be a great social media tool, but only if your audience is there, and for a lot of businesses it isn't yet. I'm not sure the increased position in searches is enough to make me think spending time on Google+ is worth it right now, for our company anyway. I get the whole trust thing, but I've already worked to build an audience on other social media outlets and they're about trust too. I don't like feeling forced to use Google+ just in case I miss out on some possible benefit.

jimr451
10-28-2013, 02:51 PM
I've had several clients over the past few weeks tell me about major traffic / sales drops. I explain the google changes are likely the reason (some had already gleaned that on their own).

So should I be telling clients to forget about SEO, and find other ways to build their business? Are we finally at the point where we can say "SEO is dead?"

-Jim

vangogh
10-29-2013, 12:06 AM
Are you saying that SEO "experts" will have to find another way to make money from unsuspecting clients?

No. I doubt this will change a thing in that regard. A large reason why seo scams work is because the people who pay for them want to believe they work. Search engines stopped paying attention to meta keywords years ago, but it doesn't stop companies listing them as part of the service and it hasn't stopped people here giving the advice to others. The scams work because people want to believe they can succeed by doing the minimal amount of work.


Not sure I love the more emphasis on Google + thing

Like it or not Google is pushing people toward it. They can collect more and better data from Google+ so it's natural that would be the social site they grab data from. My guess is the more emphasis they place on G+, the more people will use it and in time the masses will come. If you have a Google account of any kind, you pretty much have a G+ account right now.


So should I be telling clients to forget about SEO, and find other ways to build their business? Are we finally at the point where we can say "SEO is dead?

Not at all. SEO will change, but it's not going anywhere. As long as search traffic drives people to websites, seo will exist. How it's done is changing and will change again, but it won't go anywhere.

Core List
10-29-2013, 12:19 AM
Thumbs Up for creating better content, I definitely think that Google is preferring good content relative to ones search query. I I believe the theory that they are using bounce rate and other user factors to determine this. I am really putting an emphasis on creating the best content I can to answer a searchers query and answer it so they do not go back to Google after visiting my site.

I realized this a little while back with Adwords on a new site of mine. I had some pages that related to particular search terms, which the page was built on and specific keywords in a small niche were bought. The problem was, I was selling a product on this page to answer the search query and the user was expecting to get it for free, this lead to a high bounce rate on my pages. But at the same time, I had a very high quality score, as time went on my quality score stayed high, but my ads dropped off or I had to pay more up to a point where they were hardly showing at all. This was not due to competition as I checked everything. I spoke to my Google account manager and even he couldn't explain it. So I came to the conclusion that I was being penalized due to a high bounce rate and that my pages were not what people wanted, which was a free product.

I would assume that this would have a similar effect in Organic rankings and am now basing my pages on this theory, I will let you know how I go.

Regards
John
Core List USA

billbenson
10-29-2013, 12:20 AM
So do you think the h1, titlle, and alt tags will become unimportant??

While misused or abused, those tags tell G what the page is about. If the tags match the text on the site, do you really think G will throw away that information?

patrickprecisione
11-05-2013, 08:46 AM
I feel like the content stuff has been the direction Google's been headed for a long time now, so not necessarily a big surprise there.

Vangogh, are you implying that Pagerank will be eliminated in the near future?

ProLectric
11-06-2013, 10:11 AM
I think automated means of SEO are dead. Anything automated will kill you within one algorithm update. But the idea of SEO really is more all encompassing now. Think broader and natural, make use of all forms of online marketing. Steer clear of fake.

MarkFSimmons
11-06-2013, 11:04 AM
These changes will ultimately prove to be a good thing. If you've been paying attention to both sides - SEO & Content - then you should be in good shape. I pride myself on helping clients craft their content for both the engine and the potential customer. No sense in attracting the traffic only to have it bounce off your site. It's going to be frustrating and I hate losing the keyword data. I'm analytics geek at heart and love the granularity. We'll survive.

NO. SEO is not dead. It's being transformed.

YES. You still need an SEO strategy.

Header tags probably won't go anywhere. It helps identify the relevance of the site and enhances the user experience which is what Google is after.

SEO is not going anywhere IMHO.

tallen
11-06-2013, 11:40 AM
Google has ALWAYS been trying to find the best content to satisfy the search query, there is nothing new about that. All that these changes mean is that Google is getting better at understanding the actual content of a site, while relying less (if at all) on things like keywords, pagerank, etc..., which were just things that Google used to try to assess the content of site in order to match it search queries. Content has always been king.

patrickprecisione
11-07-2013, 10:50 AM
Google has ALWAYS been trying to find the best content to satisfy the search query, there is nothing new about that. All that these changes mean is that Google is getting better at understanding the actual content of a site, while relying less (if at all) on things like keywords, pagerank, etc..., which were just things that Google used to try to assess the content of site in order to match it search queries. Content has always been king.

Agreed. Yes, these are some big changes, but the doom and gloom, SEO is dead type articles are mostly just using hyperbole to earn more clicks. Not saying you're doing that Van Gogh, but there's plenty of "SEO is dead and our entire industry is doomed!" type articles out there.

vangogh
11-08-2013, 02:35 AM
So do you think the h1, titlle, and alt tags will become unimportant??

I think page titles will always be important and I don't think h1s or alt text has been that big of a deal for quite some time. I'm sure Google looks at them, but I've been saying for years that the right approach to seo isn't about trying to find the right word to place in the right part of the code. You have to think more holistically about seo. Here's an article I meant I meant to share (http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/im-just-not-that-into-seo-is-no-longer-a-problem-after-this-post.html), specifically for this quote.


SEO principles are quite simple. It all comes down to providing your visitors with great online experience and helping search engine bots understand what your site is about. That's it.


are you implying that Pagerank will be eliminated in the near future?

Not in the sense that Google won't consider it behind the scenes, but the indication is that the little green bar PageRank is probably going away. To be hones though it's not something anyone's needed to pay attention to for a few years.


there's plenty of "SEO is dead and our entire industry is doomed!" type articles out there.

Not what I was saying at all. See below.


NO. SEO is not dead. It's being transformed.

Exactly. As long as search engines exist there will always be people trying to figure out how to get more traffic from them. It's just changing like it always does. Google, Bing, etc. are always looking to improve their results and fight spam and probably a little bit of working toward making search results more profitable for them. The death of SEO is predicted on an annual business. It ain't dead or going away. it's just changing and I think for the better.

I've been working online for close to 10 years now and seo has changed so many times I can't even count. It's funny though because from the start people were talking about where Google was heading and it was about producing the best content you could produce and promoting it as though search engines didn't exist. That kind of stuff still works. The quote I posted above from the article says it all. Build the best site you can for real people and do what you can to help Google understand what the site is all about.

Wozcreative
11-08-2013, 06:09 PM
This document may be old, but I've read through it front and back and everything in it is still relevant to things that will help you make content better for google to understand your site: https://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

vangogh
11-12-2013, 01:06 AM
I had forgotten that Google put that out. I think I read it years ago, but honestly don't remember everything that was in it. I downloaded it again to give it a read. Thanks for reminding me about it.

I did take a quick look through the table of contents and it all seems relevant. One thing I would suggest is, even though this is coming from Google, not to take everything literally and assume it works 100% as advertised. Google sometimes suggests things based on what they want you to do and not necessarily what works best in their algorithms. At the same time if Google suggests doing something you should probably consider it's where they want to go, even if they aren't quite there at the moment.

Core List
11-20-2013, 10:15 PM
So do you think the h1, titlle, and alt tags will become unimportant??

I personally think these still are important and should be used for the keywords that you do want a page to be optimized for, especially the title tag.
Also from my experience, the meta keywords that are supposedly obsolete, I believe are used in other ways. It appears that these are used in the product feeds for Google Shopping results if anyone else uses them.


Vangogh, are you implying that Pagerank will be eliminated in the near future?

There has been mentions that Pagerank will not be updated near as regularly as it ever was, so it could be leaning towards this. But Authority sites are still authority sites and rank well because they have authority which also corresponds to a high pagerank. (e.g. Wikipedia or even this Forum)

Twhansbury
11-25-2013, 10:32 AM
Vangogh is spot on with the Google+ and what i've read and have come across on this forum and others has been that Google+ will influence not only search but also your mobile and phone search and contacts and local files.

smartlink
11-30-2013, 12:18 AM
Google is slowly getting rid of the importance of page rank. A lot of people were buying links to high PR sites to rank their sites up in SEO.

Content is key. SEO will never die but it does change like other users mentioned. To rank a website now you need quality over quantity. In the past years people could spam rank with blasts from SEO tools. Now it's becoming less beneficial to spam rank unless you want to rank for a month on page 1 than tank.

patrickprecisione
12-03-2013, 12:20 PM
Vangogh is spot on with the Google+ and what i've read and have come across on this forum and others has been that Google+ will influence not only search but also your mobile and phone search and contacts and local files.

Perhaps it doesn't matter, but do you think it's fair that Google is giving so much power to Google+, essentially forcing us to use their network?

vangogh
12-10-2013, 02:23 AM
Fair or not it's in their power to do so. Some people have been complaining since they started. Google would tell you it's because the other networks won't give them access to the data they need, which I think is true. At some point if people are forced to use Google+ in order to see search traffic I could see where the legal system gets involved, but I don't think Google would cross that line. As long as people are using Facebook and Twitter or whatever other network, Google has to pay attention to what's going on on those networks. Part of the reason for Google+ is that Google can see a time where most people don't need Google. Instead of searching they ask friends on social networks to point them where they want to go.

marrick
12-23-2013, 04:05 AM
So should I be telling clients to forget about SEO, and find other ways to build their business? Are we finally at the point where we can say "SEO is dead?" -Jim

SEO is still necessary especially if you are going to compete in the SERP. However, the approach should be changed. As per Penguin, Panda, and Hummingbird, Google is insisting to prioritize users of search engines. As simple as that. SEO is not dead. Traditional ways of linking and promoting your site should be changed in order to provide users the best experience as possible.