Google’s nifty new feature could mean the end of SEO as a viable traffic generation strategy.
Google a simple question, like when a certain war took place or what actor starred in a specific movie. Chances are, you’ll see a little box off to the right or near the top of your search results with a concise, almost encyclopedic answer. You don’t have to click through to another site—instead, you’re given the answer immediately within Google’s search results.
Convenient, right? This is the Google Knowledge Graph, and it’s been slowly evolving for the past three years to answer more types of questions with a greater degree of accuracy. For consumers, this is a great breakthrough. For an increasing majority of quick search queries, the step of hunting for the right external site is completely eliminated. But for businesses who rely on search-based traffic for their sites, this could be a major problem.
Content Marketing and the Promise of a Click Through
SEO is all about generating traffic, and the best way to do that today is through an ongoing content marketing strategy. Produce great content that people will want to read, provide great answers to common user questions, and eventually you’ll start ranking for user queries. This strategy has one weakness, however; it depends on users actually clicking through to your site. If you rank high in Google search, it won’t matter unless you actually earn those click throughs.
The Google Knowledge Graph has the power to eliminate click throughs altogether—not today, not next week, but in a few years, it could have gained enough traction and enough sophistication to eliminate click throughs altogether.
Is SEO a Dead Strategy?
For the time being, no. The Google Knowledge Graph simply isn’t powerful enough to eliminate all click throughs. And even if it does, direct and referral traffic can still generate more attention for your brand if you use content marketing in your campaign. If you continue giving users a great onsite experience, they’ll keep coming back to you—even if they aren’t clicking on your links in Google SERPs.
It remains to be seen exactly how this futuristic system will develop, both for consumers and for marketers, but it’s certainly a trend worth watching.
