Google Changes the SEO Game Again, Secures Search

Once again, Google has changed the game. This time, they’ve decided to hide all search keyword data from marketers, making web analytics tools unable to identify which keywords are generating organic search traffic to your website.

Of course, if you’ve been monitoring your SEO keywords for some time, you’ll know that more and more keywords were placed in the “not provided” bucket in Google Analytics. Google has been slowly moving toward securing all data since 2011.

In plain English

• You can’t see what keywords people use to find your website (from Google, anyway).
• This affects search engine optimization (SEO).

What this means for your company’s marketing efforts

• You’ll no longer be able to see what keywords bring people to your website (again, from Google).
• Traditional search engine optimization (SEO) has become quite a bit harder.
• There is still a way to find out what keywords people use to find your website, but you have to pay for it. Google is now only sharing this information with its advertisers.

My take on the news

This news probably hits the SEO specialist firms the hardest, because it makes it very tough to prove their value to you, their clients.

If you are currently using Google Analytics, you may want to consider a different web analytics tool. Sure, it’s free, but why would you give Google your website visitor data if you as a marketer can’t get anything in return?

Finally, for us inbound marketers, this news isn’t earth-shattering. While it’s nice to see what keywords people use to find your website, we believe that you should still keep creating content to answer customers’ questions. Keyword research is still important, but once it’s optimized, the only things that really matter at the end of the day are how much traffic a blog or piece of content brings you, and that it can be attributed to a search engine.

Create good content that potential customers love. That’s all you need to know.

Want to read more about this?

Just in case you want to find out more, please see the two resources below.

• When Keyword (not provided) is 100 Percent of Organic Referrals, What Should Marketers Do? – Whiteboard Tuesday (Moz)
• Goodbye, Keyword Data: Google Moves Entirely to Secure Search (Search Engine Watch)