So this one isn’t about link building or any specific part of SEO per se.
But more of a general prediction almost, of how things look like they’re headed.
And this isn’t some bs I came up with in my head (although if I waffle on it can sound like it is!)
It’s a feeling shared by others in the industry and in a way, its just common sense as well.
We need to think about the reason Google exists,and why they are at the top of the industry right now.
In comparison to search engines like Yahoo and Bing, the algorithm is so much more advanced.
The results are so much more relevant and accurate in comparison to anyone else. So when you search something, you can be confident you’re getting something which is actually what your looking for, or which answers your question.
And this is now as a result of something they rolled out in 2015, which we now call the google “RankBrain”..
Rankbrain isn’t just an update though. Its an articial intelligence system. Machine learning that means it improves with each passing day and with every new website and page that Google crawls.
there are a few factors specifically where I thing AI will become a game-changer
Keywords
So eventually things like trying to “target keywords” could be athing of the past.
And by that, I mean when people want to rank for something like “how to get rid of mould”, they won’t have to literally insert that exact phrase in the h1 tag, meta tag, x number of times in the body of the article ,etc etc.
I mean I’d argue that its less important even now in 2018, but this will become even more evident in 2020 onwards.
So semantics comes into play more. As long as the article is contextual and uses language related to getting rid of mould, various synonyms, etc. Then the article will rank better. And then it’ll rank for a whole host of other keywords, purely because it is contextually relevant.
So it’ll be less about targeting individual keyword phrases, and more about simply “writing about the right subjects”.
Links
And where links come in, things like the relevancy of the link and actual real traffic will really come into play. So, they way that people game the system by using web 2.0 blogs, PBNs or whatever, may at the very least, become significantly degraded.
So actual traffic itself will become the most important factor rather than links themselves. However of course,, links are still important because that’s the best way of generating traffic.
User Behaviour
And with the use of Google analytics and Chrome going up, google has access to more and more data like user behaviour. So they have ever more access to things like bounce rate, how much time people are spending on the site, etc.
So if a site has a particularly high bounce rate, even if they are mentioning the keyword the right number of times, in just the right places — it’ll be plain to see that its probably a low quality site, perhaps thin on content and stuff.
Whereas, a site which has people browsing and engaging well, but only mentions the keywords a few times, should rank better because people are staying on it longer. But as I said in point 2, if the content is good and using the right language, the exact keyword phrases used shouldn’t matter.
