Future of (Not Provided): The SEO Post-Keywords

Since its appearance in October 2011, the percentage of organic search terms shown as "(not provided)" in Google Analytics has been increasing slowly and surely.

Back then, Google started using SSL encryption for searches made by users who have logged into their Google account.

At the beginning of this year, they also applied this encryption to searches made from the Google Chrome omnibox. (Searches performed using the navigation bar).

Depending on the theme and target audience of each website, the percentage of search terms reported as (not provided) could range from a 20% to a tremendous 90%.

For example, in this blog it is normal that the percentage of keywords reported as Not Provided exceeds 90%, since the target audience will normally be with their Google session started when looking for questions or queries about Adwords.

Lately the percentage of organic searches shown as (not provided) increased even more, since in an attempt to "protect the privacy of its users", Google decided to start implementing encrypted searches for users who are not with their Google session started .

You can read a super interesting article about it on Search Engine Land: Google confirms quietly moving to make all searches secure, except for ad clicks.

Below I show a graph where you can see the growth of the percentage of keywords (not provided), from the launch of (not provided) until today, for a website that does not have a "tech savvy" audience.

It is worth clarifying that the graph only shows organic traffic:

You can even visit the site www.notprovidedcount.com To get an estimate of when you should stop getting keyword information, this is a great experiment done by analyzing data from hundreds of sites around the world.

According to this site, it is estimated that in November 2013 Organic search term data from users should no longer be received.

Does this mean that SEO is dead?!?

I'm not even going to answer this question, but instead I leave it to you to count the number of clichés that can be seen in the following image:

Getting back to the topic seriously, there are a number of reasons why SEO is still just as important as ever.

1) A well-optimized website will continue to generate organic traffic, only it will be more difficult to determine what the exact searches are that visitors are coming from.

2) The organic channel is still very important for generating leads and sales.

3) A good organic positioning continues to add brand value to the positioned business.

What will change is the way of working the organic positioning of a website, although it should not be a very drastic change if we have been implementing a good SEO strategy.

1) The changes that the semantic web and the new Google algorithm will bring with it must be well understood. You can read an article about it at the following link: Google Hummingbird and Semantic Search

2) The content should not be generated with the intention of ranking for a specific keyword. Rather, content strategies should be oriented to the needs, doubts and most frequent queries of our target audience.

This is not very different from what has already been done today and always with content strategies, nothing else should be used a less keyword-oriented approach.

3) Link-Building using anchor texts with very specific keywords is something from last season.

This practice is still as important as ever, but it should be done in a much more organic way, prioritizing even more quality over quantity and without as much focus on anchor keywords.

It is better to use a good link opportunity to strengthen the brand image of a business than to use anchor texts like "plumbers in seville".

But ... then how do I analyze the performance of organic traffic?

This will be a very good challenge for the end of the year or the beginning of next year, you should look for analysis alternatives that do not depend so much on keywords.