Google : Links going, going, gone. How will you strategise this?

[Whitey]

Better take note of this and predict your strategy for the future.

I assume this this is going to be a hot topic as in less than 12hrs there are already 7k+ visits to the video!

Matt Cutts: Will backlinks lose their importance in ranking? [youtube.com...]
Thanks to Rustybrick on Seroundtable for drawing attention to this: [seroundtable.com...]

Folks may want to reflect on recent conversation's where Matt Cutt's revealed that they had experimented with results not influenced by links and they were not good enough to use. The direction is certainly set.

Personally, I think for many there's a tie in with conversations commenced recently over here on brands and how reputation is managed by Google :

What Does "Branding" Actually Mean? [webmasterworld.com...]

and how Google attempted to manage brands earlier on with

Big brands do not have the upper hand - Matt Cutts [webmasterworld.com...]

Key milestones for me have been brand measurement ; on page quality measurement / Panda ; and link devaluation / Penguin; and somewhat still wobbly, authority referral point measurements.

So what's your strategy on the go forward? How will you translate the thinking of Matt's video into yours or your client's site's future? What will you be communicating to your staff or clients ?

I can see a new revitalised industry forming.

Thoughts?

[EditorialGuy]

I'm going to continue focusing on content instead of trying to second-guess Google. In the long run, that's probably the wisest strategy.

[ColourOfSpring]

Hmmm, I didn't see anything startling in this video. Cutts says Google will rely on links for years to come but slightly less so, and also relying more on WHO wrote the article (authorship). Then in the last minute of the video, he's essentially talking about Google's Knowledge Graph results with Google understanding questions rather than just keywords (i.e. delivering the answer immediately). How do you strategise THAT one? You can't really.

I agree with EG, just focus on content anyway as it's humans who give me a living at the end of the day.

[Robert Charlton]

The reports of the demise of links are greatly exaggerated.

I work with clients to make sure we have a content strategy that anticipates user needs and intent for the likely range of users who might enter a query... with sufficient scope of content to engage visitors who want to explore the site. Branding needs to be what the company is about, not how it's cleverly described.

We don't try to target long tail by targeting a list of keyword combinations. We try to target it by richness of content, built around focused themes.

At the same time, we of course do our homework about what vocabulary people are using to describe the product and phrases likely to be used in search. If there's a market segment we want to be part of, we spend a lot of effort researching that, and cultivating content, and business and community connections over time.

Yes, there is an apparent increase in the importance of onpage content, but I never assumed that it was gone. (I'm mystified, when I see many pages of sites I review, how the developers thought that Google was going to understand what the pages were about.)

On ecommerce, we're spending a lot of time thinking about user interfaces, hoping, for certain types of sites, that visitor experience on the site will get around some of the difficulties Panda is presenting. Value-added content is more important than ever.

Site and page structure, both, are vitally important. Everything is focused to making a page instantly clear to visitors and on getting the searcher to what they're looking for in the most efficient way possible.

I'm pushing clients to use video, where it makes sense, but not check-list video. It's got to be really good stuff.

[Martin Ice Web]

On ecommerce, we're spending a lot of time thinking about user interfaces, hoping, for certain types of sites, that visitor experience on the site will get around some of the difficulties Panda is presenting. Value-added content is more important than ever.

Site and page structure, both, are vitally important. Everything is focused to making a page instantly clear to visitors and on getting the searcher to what they're looking for in the most efficient way possible.

I guess this is most important. I realized that less information for the first sight is better than to much. Keep the visitor on page by giving him piece after piece.
I downgrade my content to most important matching the title. Extra information is loaded with ajax.
I think this is something that users like, because they can "play". click here and there, make something visible or hide it. Make the user be thinking he has complete access to the site.

But google will forever fight against links because links mean poeple are leaded to another site without using google.

[EditorialGuy]

But google will forever fight against links because links mean poeple are leaded to another site without using google.

Why would Google "fight against links"? Useful links are Google Search's reason for being. Links are also how Google Search finds pages to index. Without links, there wouldn't be a Google Search.

Note the word "useful." Don't conflate "useful links" with "crappy, worthless, artificial, SEO-driven links."