GOOGLE ANALYTICS

byRodnayHitch

472 followers

12 years ago

This article was on Huffington Post and also proves that we are getting the proper training here at Wealthy Affiliate !!!!

Big changes are on the way in the world of SEO, as it was announced last month that Google Analytics is essentially going to be scrapped. At present many businesses use Google Analytics to identify the keywords that are proving the most successful in order to use them as part of SEO strategy to drive traffic to their website. At present, most of these keywords are made freely available with only a few listed as 'not provided'. However, Google is about to encrypt all keyword search data, which means that the number of 'not provided' keywords appearing in Google Analytics is soon going to be at 100%.

This move shouldn't come as a huge surprise to anyone who has had one eye on the movements of the search engine giant over the past couple of years. There has been a definite shift in attitude towards encouraging the use of organic content that is genuinely useful and tailoring Google to provide advantages to those sites employing this method. On the flip side, the search behemoth has started a shift away from those sites that are basically useless but are constructed to attract people thanks to black hat SEO techniques. Removing the ability to see which keywords are working is probably a logical next step.

There are numerous reasons being discussed as to why Google might be doing this. For starters, there was all the furore over the company possibly revealing data to the NSA and introducing this new encryption would stop such accusations as it would block those kinds of organizations too. Officially, the line is that Google is trying to protect online users' privacy by encrypting this information, but it's also hard to ignore the fact that the only way this information will be available now is via paid for Google Ad Words.

Whatever the reasons for the move, the key question is how is this going to affect SEO as we know it? While some people are freaking out over the loss of Google Analytics, actually the situation really isn't that bad. Although there can be the odd strange keyword that works in an SEO context, most of the time the successful keywords are those that would appear organically in a website anyway - so they are probably already there. There are also many other ways in which the success of digital marketing campaigns can be measured that don't require the tools that are available via Google Analytics. These include studying regular rankings reviews to see which pages tend to get the most visits and which title keyword tags are proving to be the most effective. Other tools, such as looking at the amount of time visitors spend on the site, bounce rate and conversions can also be used to fill the gap left by Google Analytics.

So, it's really not all bad, even though some in the SEO industry might be crying into their coffee over the loss of Google Analytics. For smart organizations it is simply a case of shifting focus to new monitoring mechanisms and ensuring that content is of the fresh, organic and useful kind that Google will reward.