[Build Backlinks Online] What Is SEO Now that Everything Is (Not Provided)?

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'What Is SEO Now that Everything
Is (Not Provided)?'

Posted by Ruth_Burr
Google's recent announcement that it will be obfuscating all keyword referral
data going forward has created yet another occasion for (and perhaps the first
occasion that really deserves) that age-old cry, "is SEO dead?"


My response to the "is SEO dead" question is always the same: The Internet
isn't going away, and neither is selling stuff. It's a pretty safe bet that
online marketing is here to stay, and as long as search engines drive traffic to
websites, marketers should be thinking about how to get the best audience and
the most sales from that traffic. The optimal traffic from search engines, if
you will.


Here at Moz, our organic traffic has already been at over 50% (not provided)
for over a year, and our (not provided) numbers have been hovering around 80%
for a while now, so I've had some time to mull this over: in a post-keyword
world, what is SEO?




Moving away from keywords

One reason Google's move toward (not provided) feels like such a blow is that
for a long time, SEO was all about keywords. You'd start by brainstorming and
researching keywords, and once you had your list you'd assign those keywords to
pages and content pieces. Then, once you had each page nice and targeted around
a keyword, you'd build some links, track traffic from those keywords to those
pages, and adjust as needed. Done and done.


The thing is, even without the loss of Google's referring keyword data, search
engine traffic isn't just about the keyword anymore. Thanks to the new search
carousel, it's possible for users to perform several searches and get to several
different SERPs from just one query. Thanks to Google's autocomplete feature,
users are often using a suggested query rather than whatever their original
keyword might be.


The real killer of the keyword-driven approach isn't (not provided), though.
It's Google's increasing devotion to semantic relationships between topics and
entities on the web. Author Rank, personalization, and the Knowledge Graph have
added new elements to consider: Now, in addition to what your content says and
who links to it, Google also cares about who created it, what else they've done,
and who's shared it. Content from a trusted source can rank in personalized
results for related keywords without specifically targeting them; Google's
gotten that good at figuring out topical relationships.

Pages and authority

What this means for SEO is that we need to shift our focus from getting
traffic from keywords to getting traffic to pages. The recent hot trend in SEO
around quality content is one aspect of that transitionâit's much easier
to drive traffic to a great piece of content, regardless of how keyword-targeted
it is. A more content-oriented mindset will also help us build topical
authority, which is clearly something Google is interested in; they've spent a
lot of time and a lot of money trying to figure out who knows the most about
what, and authorship is just the latest development in that ongoing quest.




Smarty Pants. by ~Shari, on Flickr


Building authority around a topic involves new, #RCS-oriented twists on
classic SEO techniques:

Brainstorm specific content pieces within your target topic, research to gauge
potential audience interest, plan it out and create it (keyword research,
anyone?).
Promote your content to audiences you know have an interest in it (some people
might call this social media).
Build relationships with entities who already have established authority in
your topic, especially those who are in your geographical area, and start
brainstorming new content and sharing each other's content (that's link building
but without all the horrible, tedious or shady stuff).

The great thing about focusing on building topical authority is that all of
these tactics also drive traffic to pages. If your goal becomes "get a lot of
awesome traffic to this awesome page" rather than "rank for this one keyword by
any means possible" or "build x number of links per month" you can continue
proving excellence in everything you do while doing better marketing.


In fact, shifting the focus from keywords to pages means that you can show the
traffic that came from links you builtâthere's no faster way to wean an
exec off of the "x number of links per month" mentality than to show what a huge
difference there is in different links' potential to drive traffic.


This trend should also (hopefully) eventually kill the idea that we will come
in to an existing content site and "do SEO" to it (can I get an
amen?)âinstead, it's more important than ever that SEO be considered
throughout the process of building a site.

Brand power

One potential pitfall of targeting increased traffic, especially in the
absence of specific keyword targeting, is that clients may claim that increased
traffic comes from brand recognition, not from your SEO efforts. To which my
rejoinder is: Who says brand building isn't part of SEO?


Part of building topical authority is setting up your brand as the place to go
for the best information on that topic. Bust up the notion that branded keyword
traffic never comes from SEO! Use your link-building efforts, whether that's PR,
guest blogging or content sharing, to get your brand out there. You can track
your progress in building your brand online by monitoring search volume for your
branded terms in Google Trends. By increasing search volume for your branded
terms, which you probably already rank for, you're alsoâyou guessed
itâbuilding traffic to pages! #Winning!

Win at fundamentals

If you're really invested in showing Google that your site is an authority on
a topic, you should also be showing Google that your site is a pleasant place to
beânot a weird, difficult-to-parse heap of broken pages that takes forever
to load. Do you see where I'm going with this?





FREE GARBAGE!!! by sylvar, on Flickr


If (like me) you work on a big site, or an old site, you know that when it
comes to technical SEO there's always more to do. That's one part of SEO that
hasn't changed at all: Solid technical SEO can still take you very far. Make it
easy for Google (and Bing, and, you know, people) to load your site, to navigate
your site and to figure out what each page is about, and you will be rewarded
with return visits. Semantic markup is the new hotness in technical SEO for a
reason: It helps search engines easily figure out what you're trying to do with
your data.


The nice thing about technical SEO is that it doesn't require people outside
of your company (or your client's company) to take action in order to succeed.
You can have a running list of SEO improvements in your dev team's queue,
launching while you're taking the time (and it does take time) to build
relationships and create great content.

OK, but what about keywords?

Focusing on topical authority and building traffic to pages is great, but
search engines are still search engines, and that means that
queriesâa.k.a. keywordsâare still important. Rand had a great post
recently about ways to back into keyword trackingâif you know you're
ranking for a popular keyword, and you know you're getting search traffic to
that page, it's a fair bet that at least some of that traffic is being driven by
that keyword.


This is the time, however, to be training our clients away from keywords.
Keywords feel nice, and it's great to Google yourself and have your site come
up, but the more we can track our activities back to real traffic from real
people (and real sales that result in real money!), the better and more
interesting work we'll be able to do.


To that end, we all need to be thinking beyond Google when we think about
traffic sources. We need to be thinking about other search engines. We need to
be thinking about traffic from social media, link building, and third-party
content-sharing sites like Pinterest and SlideShare. Reducing our dependence on
Google is the best way to "algorithm-proof" our sites and make sure we're
getting the best traffic and sales we can. So maybe next time there's a big
change like this, it won't be quite so upsetting.
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