Google has pulled another rabbit out of the hat (besides Google’s obsession with content freshness) recently because they’ve decided they are not going to provide you with information about the keywords people used to get to your site. If you look at your traffic stats at the moment you will see the biggest majority of your visitors come through the not-provided keyword. When Google rolls out this update you won’t be able to see anything else. It’s not the worst thing in the world, so you don’t have to worry yet.
I don’t want you to think nothing will change because it’s nice to have as much information as possible when you’re trying to grow a business. That is why you shouldn’t listen to anyone who tells you there is nothing to worry about, but at the same time you can ignore the people who tell you the world is going to cave in on your head. Let’s look at some of the things you won’t be able to do any more after the change come into play.
No More Drilling Down as Keyword Data Not Provided
Knowing what areas to work on never used to be difficult. When you looked at your analytics account you could see what keywords were driving the most traffic to each page. That meant you could concentrate on those ones in order to see quicker results. Now it’s going to be impossible to do that and you’ll need to look for others ways to find out what to work on. From now on you can work on the keywords closer to the top of the front page instead.
Updating On-page Content
When you first begin blogging you don’t really pay much attention to what information is inside each article. As you get a little more experienced you realize changing a few words on a page can increase your conversion rate. What do you think you could do if you knew what keywords people were using to reach an article. You could tailor the article to relate more to the keyword people were using, but unfortunately you can’t do that anymore.
Long-tail Keywords
Sometimes you end up getting traffic from keywords you didn’t even know you were ranking for. Each of those traffic-generating keywords probably has a lot of closely related keywords you could rank for too. Once you know the keywords people are using to land on your site you could then go and scatter some more related keywords throughout the article. Just like the other two techniques we’ve talked about it’s not possible to do that any more.
Track Your Rankings
Do you remember what technique we said you would need to use if you wanted to drill down on certain keywords? You will need to tackle the ones that are close to the top page of Google. The only way you will be able to do that is if you track your rankings, but luckily there are lots of websites that will allow you to do it for a small fee per month. Try to track as many keywords as possible because it will give you a lot more information to work with.
Creativity is King
This isn’t the first time Google has made you work harder for something and it definitely won’t be the last time. I’m positive they don’t sit in their fancy offices thinking of ways to conspire against you, but that is what you must be thinking. The only way you will be able to survive is by getting as creative as possible. Once you unleash your creativity you will be able to handle anything Google or anyone else throws at you and your business won’t falter.
Jack White, the author of this article, is a software developer with, Webfirm, leaders in online and digital marketing. He loves the engagement of a good game of chess and loves watching stand-up comedy acts over the weekend.
