The fact of the matter regarding what’s on the horizon regarding Google and SEO is unknown but wee can tell from past and present actions by Google, it may not look good for the unprofessionals in SEO.
At present, the highest level of professional SEO are those webmasters and marketers who display honesty, relevance, and technical knowledge. Google has been hitting the SEO industry with algorithms that are meant to vanquish the spammers and scammers out there and those tech savvy people who have exploited Google’s systems.
The reason for this is because Google wants their surfers to get the most relevant and hazard free search results as it raises the quality of their lives and lessons Google’s liability when the bad guys divert honest surfers to unscrupulous deals and malware laden websites.
People have been complaining to Google and the law enforcement authorities on an hourly basis. The amount of scamming is overwhelming. To combat this, Google is taking proactive steps that unfortunately doesn’t include communicating with the SEO industry like it used to. This was due to happen as Google can’t be the ‘internet’s police’. With billions of people online, and tens of millions of those, outright criminals, no government on Earth can contain them, however, companies like Google can raise the bar regarding criteria to be associated with them and diminish contact with the commercial sector that uses irresponsible tactics and technologies.
This take by Google has the SEO industry terrified no end and with good reason too. Google isn’t dependent on SEO anymore. They’re taking a hard line stance to cut down the manpower and resources to battle scammers, and devote more interest in Artificial Intelligence that can do the work of an army of humans. This use of AI may be unforgiving, bu it brings the bottom line to what Google feels it should be providing and cutting down on expenses as well as providing results that the public will appreciate and stay with Google.
Google can’t afford to lose ground. It’s in competition with Facebook now as a search engine. Facebook is using technology that scours the full spectrum of micro details searches and results. At times it is scary to be a Facebook member and finding results and responses displayed before you even search. This is the most efficient organic traffic around and Google cannot be found in second place as it would cost billions in losses. So this means it’s better for Google to distance themselves from the troublesome SEO industry than shake hands and have coffee.
This means only the strongest in SEO will survive. The only way to tell if an SEO expert is still on their A Game is by solid, verifiable statistics. The survivalist SEO expert will see the forest for the trees regarding changes in Google and other search engines and be able to change up strategies to best make advantage.
It’s not going to be good in the short and long term and those within the SEO industry had better straighten up and fly right, or find themselves with numerous penalties for even the slightest or nebulous infractions. There can be no risk taking here. Well produced websites with relevant data, proper grammar and spelling, well tagged content, load time, and all the other fundamentals that must be competent. This goes for links especially. Whether getting rid of inbound and outbound site links is unknown, but it appears as if Google is going for organic link in from a variety of real persons who are putting up links via social media and networking. This shows that companies aren’t doing the link building game, but that a site is being acknowledged by a real person as being useful, which is exactly what Google wants.