For the last two years, the field of search engine optimization has been largely fueled by keywords and their rankings. It’s all about getting on the first page. However, last month, Google announced that they will not be providing over 80% of keywords that site traffic come from, making the job of internet marketers such as ourselves quite difficult.
However it is important to realize that the Internet is thriving, and therefore online marketing is also alive and well. There is a lot of value to websites beyond ranking keywords, and now Google is rewarding sites that focus on important topics such as design, content and authority. Now that keywords are not provided, in order to rank highly in search results, it is more important than ever to become an authority on the topic or product your business is selling.
In SEO, the new goal is to drive traffic to pages by being a source of authority, and not just based on keywords alone. Now it is important to create quality content in the form of copy, blog posts and images and promote the content to interested audiences through social media. It also helps to develop relationships with other sites or bloggers that are influencers on your topic and think of ways you can work together to create more content.
As for design, it is more important than ever to have a technically-savvy site that is both visually savvy and a source of great content. It should be easy for all search engines to load. It should also be easy for people to navigate your site and learn information from it. There should also be links to social media profiles if applicable so that people can refer to them as reference to how others view your company. These profiles can also rank highly in search engine results as representative of your company.
Therefore, the future of SEO lies not in keywords but with content and becoming a source of authority on your chosen topic.