Future of Search and SEO – Jagger and Google Analytics. Together, these two events may have changed the face of search forever.

First, let’s discuss Jagger… Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they’re universally feared because they can have a dramatic impact on a website’s ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) worldwide in a state of panic.

Why was Jagger so fearful and upset?

Simple… With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients’ money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and vital than they really are.

They do this primarily by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While there’s nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e., they’re not considered black hat), they don’t really demonstrate that the site is relevant or essential.

All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or an increase in the number of links. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link to enhance the value of their content or to increase their credibility and authority.

In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant and essential sites, not just appropriate ones.

To this end, Google invests millions of dollars and employs the world’s most brilliant mathematicians to create algorithms that identify sites that are trying to trick them. And that’s precisely what Jagger did. When it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance. (Unfortunately, it also demoted some sites that actually deserve a high ranking.

1) Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy?
2) Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy?
3) Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to #1 & #2)?
4) More weight thrown back to PR @ top domain?
5) Increased importance on AdSense placement relevancy?
6) Possible introduction of CSS Spam filtering?
7) Overall Blog demotions?
8) New and unresolved “canonical” issues?

Some more interesting effects were reported by WG Moore, who runs several test sites for SEO purposes. By monitoring the links to his test sites as reported by Google, he established that:

“All reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google is downgrading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity.

Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way… During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links were restored. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content.

They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise, such as Web Analytics, or from forums with relevant threads. So we think that these links came back because of the content, not the linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating website. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.”

In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands – if not millions – of people! As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.

Interestingly, the article PR (article submission) came through Jagger seemingly unscathed. One thing is clear: article PR is one of the best ways to obtain a high ranking.

Google Analytics

The second monumental event that occurred recently was the launch of Google Analytics – https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/. Google Analytics is a free web statistics solution that not only reports regular site statistics but also integrates directly with Google AdWords, giving web admins insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. According to Google, ” Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.”

This is such a landmark move because, for the first time, Google will have access to your real web stats.

1) Google is giving every web admin worldwide free access to quality web statistics.
2) Millions of webmasters will accept this ‘gift’, if only because it integrates directly with their Google AdWords campaigns.
3) Google will then have full access to the actual web stats of millions of commercial websites.
4) Google will have the right to use these stats to develop new technologies.
5) What’s the next logical step? Of course, Google will use these statistics to help determine its rankings!

It should come as no surprise. It’s been on the cards – and frequently discussed – for a long time. For example, Jayde Online CEO Mel Strocen recently published an article on the same topic, “The Future of Website Ranking.” He quite rightly asserts that:

“Google’s “democratic” vision of the Web will never be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms.”

The Future of Search & SEO

Google is the only major search engine that considers both what other sites think of your website and what your visitors think of it. Because it has the most advanced algorithms for assessing link popularity and will soon have access to the most far-reaching and accurate web statistics to determine user popularity, its competitors will be catching up for a long time.

So if that’s the future of search, what’s the future of SEO? The future of SEO is undoubtedly one where:

• One-way text links from relevant pages continue to be the most valuable links

• Reciprocal linking continues to decline

• The ‘shotgun’ approach to link buying declines

• Mass email link requests decline

• Free directory submission declines

• Niche directory submission increases

• Article PR (article submission) increases

• Article submission sites play a much bigger and more critical role in helping online publishers locate quality articles (due to the increasing article volume)

• User popularity is just as significant as link popularity, which means:

– The quality of article PR improves to increase site traffic, credibility, and loyalty—The quality of website content improves to convert traffic and encourage repeat visits. Clearly, the choices for SEOs will be pretty much limited to paying for links at niche sites and/or engaging in article PR.

• It satisfies Google’s criteria for relevance and importance. Linking site owners include your article and link because, in doing so, their site becomes more useful to visitors, and their business gains credibility and authority.

• It generates hundreds of free links quickly enough to make it worthwhile, but not so soon as to raise red flags at Google (in the form of link dampening).

• Links are permanent, and you don’t have to pay to keep them there.

• You get a lot of qualified referred traffic who already trust you and your expertise. This satisfies Google’s visitor popularity criteria while also bringing you a lot of extra customers.

Conclusion

The lesson from Jagger is, don’t try to trick Google! They’ve got more money and more brains than virtually any company in the world. It’ll only end in tears! Don’t spend time and money trying to make your site look essential and relevant. Instead, spend that time and money actually making it meaningful and relevant! Content—the real content behind the optimization—is the answer. After all, whether it’s an article or a web page, it’s the content that keeps ‘eyes on paper’, and that’s what it’s all about.

Happy optimizing!