Google has announced it will begin to encrypt searches on Google made by logged in users. This means that sites will no longer receive referral data from these searchers.
The referral data reveals the organic search terms which led visitors to a particular webpage. It is a vital piece of information in assessing the performance of keywords, optimising landing pages and more.
The decision to remove this source of data has been justified by Google on privacy grounds, citing the example of people using wi-fi in public places. However the referral data from paid search adverts will still be available, whether the user is logged in or not.
So the vital information required when optimising a website is now only available when the search results are paid for through Pay Per Click!
Impact on websites:
This will have a negative impact on the optimisation of websites. It will mean that doing SEO will be a relatively blind process of trial and error.
Where SEO specialists would look at the organic keyword data to evaluate which keywords are performing well, and those that are under performing and then test different landing page content to improve conversions and website engagement, they now will not be able to.
For example, if your website had a landing page that has 10000 visitors a week, but a poor conversion rate and a high bounce rate, currently your SEO would look into the keywords and find out which ones were contributing to the poor conversion rates and those that had the high bounce rates, and work on these accordingly.
Recent studies have shown that consumers are 12 times more likely to buy your products and services after finding your site through organic search engine results than all other methods of advertising.
ipebble specialise in Link Building because 71% of SEO is Link Building.Google give results using the Page Rank algorithm. Larry Page and Sergey Brin created this algorithm while at Stamford University. The algorithm calculates a recursive score for pages, based on the weighted sum of the Page Ranks of the pages linking to them. The Google algorithm is based on link building and is the most important element of SEO and achieving high rankings.
"PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, this giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. Google
Search Engine Optimisation will help place your business right in front of the consumer's eyes when they are ready to buy. Your competitors are already using Search Engine Optimisation to improve their search engine rankings. Make sure your website is alongside them.
Pay Per Click gets fast results but can be very expensive and has no long term benefits. PPC campaigns do show results quicker but when the money stops so does the traffic. Google clearly marks their sponsored listings and many people do not click on them because of this. This means you are reaching a much smaller audience than organic Search Engine Result Pages.