What came first? Google or SEO
Answer Yahoo & Bing!

In an Global industry worth billions of $’s every year, Google have finally turned on the hand that fed them for so long.

Recently Google removed the keyword data that was displayed in Google analytics and announced that they were no longer going to display it to end users. That is unless you sign up to their premium analytics for a cool flat annual fee of $150,000 (USD).

When asked why they did it Google’s response was

We implemented the change because of users’ privacy concerns.

Well not quiet so, you can see the keyword data in Google premium analytics if you’re prepared to pay for it..

(Google seems to have forgotten about users privacy concerns already)

Regrettably, many brands, seo teams and content marketing companies have relied on this keyword data to greatly help optimise site performance, so now they must adjust their tactics.

It’s hard to see why Google would allow the richest companies in the world to be able to see the keyword information but not the vast majority. Perhaps for Google, its just about the money.

Without doubt keyword data is required by anyone to make good choices and Google have the Data. Bing and Yahoo don’t do this.

Unfortunately your business is no longer on a level playing field when it comes to Optimising keywords against content.

So what can you do that’s useful and doesn’t include guesswork?

Long before Google, SEO consultants were working hard to achieve positions in Yahoo and Bing (known then as MSN).

The seo community exists to help small businesses be successful on line.

Greed drives all markets and always has done. So there’s no point in getting upset about this latest Google change.

If you’re an SEO company or a private individual running an online business
you need to know which keywords should you be targeting and as long as you gain positions on those keywords you should do well. That’s assuming your content and user experience is a good one.

It’s safe to assume that an end user would search in the same way, using the same keywords regardless of if they use Google, Bing or Yahoo.

So to track your keywords sign up to a bing webmasters tools account and you’ll be able to see your traffic keywords in the reporting section in relation to Bing.

OK its got different numbers because Bing isn’t as popular as Google but the figures can help you decide if your keywords are doing well at bringing traffic in for you. Just do a simple percentage increase in the numbers to represent Google’s dominance and bingo you have a clue (not fact) about what’s working for you.

As far as Google goes, today they changed their terms of service again. It certainly looks as though the final end game is coming where Google deny all introducers of business access to their systems.

The reason? SEO companies have been charging for their services and Google need, and want that revenue. If your business is built on the back of Google you need to re think your strategy because Google have no place for you in theirs.

Google has a dominance that is certainly a monopoly, but in today’s difficult markets small businesses don’t have the budgets to to take a chance on on-line marketing. So has this change been a good one for them?

Almost certainly the answer is no. The change has left millions of small businesses cut off and excluded from Google. It’s left them incapable of making a good decision based on fact.Whilst the richest companies and Google continue to build huge profits the small business is the real victim.

Google’s Stock market intro goes something like this.

Google Inc., a technology company, builds products and provides services to organize the information and make it universally accessible and useful.

This statement is somewhat misleading now.

But in any David and Goliath story everyone always has a choice.

If you use Google then you promote and feed them. If you stop using them then they are forced to change.

We think Google on the whole do a  lot of good things but in 2013 they seemed to have started to forget how they got so big and how they got where they are.

Google are almost certainly playing to its shareholders appetite for profit who knows where it will all end up.