Google Not Provided, What does it mean for SEO?

Google has taken the unprecedented move of securing all searches through organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page. from now on. It’s a major move from the original 70 per cent of secured searches. It’s been lauded for its effects on marketers, webmasters, and SEOs.

Shooting to the Moon

Critics have slammed this latest Google move as, what they claim as, shooting to the moon and going all in. Google’s official line on the matter has cited privacy concerns. They released a statement and said they felt securing everything with SSL encryption would protect the privacy of users.

Forced Into Google

For SEOs, this means they can’t simply look at Google Analytics and find out what keywords were used to find them, in terms of organic traffic. Now any search result in Google will automatically have this encryption applied.It practically forces SEO firms to use Google Webmaster tools. Whilst there are other search engines, Google is the only one which really matters. SEO consultants must completely switch to everything Google or they’ll quickly fall behind their competitors. With Google being so powerful and forcing through this change relatively quietly, they have no choice but to conform.

A Price on Privacy

SEO blogger Dan Sullivan said Google has put a price on privacy with this month. He has raised the issue before when the number of secure searches was increased. These ‘not provided’ keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. queries offer SEO companies no way of working out which keywords work and which don’t. If they sign up to Google AdWords and start using paid advertisements, however, they get all keyword data, regardless of whether the organic search was encrypted. Critics say Google is willing to release private information if companies are willing to pay for it.

A Shift to Social Media

This isn’t the catastrophic SEO issue people think it is. With Google Penguin and the following minor changes, the prominence of social media increased. Keywords are now considered less valuable than a strong social media presence, in terms of where sites rank in the search engine results. The added difficulties of using traditional keyword tactics could potentially indicate the downfall of these techniques. It could all be in Google’s plan to change the way SEO works. They want their search results to reflect popularity not on how well sites know the technical guidelines of SEO. They want everyone to get involved with it. To an extent, they don’t want people to even think about their SEO value. They want everything to happen naturally and the SEO matters to be left to them.

SEO Firms and Where They Stand

It doesn’t look good for affiliate marketers and SEO firms. It’s now necessary for them to move to a social media marketing position. They must retrain themselves if they’re going to survive, or hope their clients are willing to pay more for paid advertising services. Many in the industry speculate on an overcrowded social media marketing industry and the death of many websites which fail to capitalise on these new guidelines until they completely lose their rankings.