Zigmas Pekarskas, CEO of GG Group Media: 'SEO is dead, again!'

The Baltic Times Magazine reached out to Zigmas Pekarskas, CEO of GG Group Media, a Lithuanian marketing company specializing in SEO optimization and AI tool integration in digital marketing, to provide valuable insights into the past, present, and future of SEO. With 10 years of experience in the high-risk industry and competing on the global stage, Z. Pekarskas shares his expert perspective.

The SEO Earthquake: Google's Biggest Shifts in the Last Year.

The May 2024 Google Leak: In May 2024, the SEO community was shaken by a significant leak of internal Google Search API documentation. This leak exposed over 14,000 potential ranking features and modules used by Google. While Google confirmed the authenticity of the documents, they emphasized that the information was out of context. The leak, brought to light by SEO professionals Rand Fishkin and Michael King after being discovered by Erfan Azimi, provided valuable insights into Google's ranking algorithms, including the continued importance of backlinks, user engagement metrics, and content freshness.

No Time to Breathe for Webmasters: In the past, SEO professionals typically anticipated two major Google updates per year, providing ample time to analyze and adapt. However, recent years have seen a dramatic shift towards more frequent core updates, often occurring monthly or even bi-weekly. This constant state of flux leaves webmasters with little time to breathe, analyze changes thoroughly, and implement adjustments effectively.

Emphasis on User Intent and Content Relevance: In recent years, search engines have become increasingly sophisticated in understanding the context and intent behind user queries. This has led to a shift from simply matching keywords to delivering content that truly satisfies the user's search intent. SEO strategies now prioritize creating comprehensive, user-centric content that addresses the specific needs and interests of target audiences. This evolution has been gradual, moving from a focus on individual keywords to keyword clusters, and now towards topical entities. The goal is to demonstrate expertise and answer user intent as quickly and concisely as possible.

User Experience and User Signals: Google now recognizes that each user has a different value for different pages, and it meticulously tracks how users interact with websites. This includes analyzing which types of users are attracted to a webpage, how much time they spend on it, their scroll depth, and other engagement metrics. These user signals are becoming increasingly important ranking factors because they are difficult to manipulate and provide genuine insights into content quality and relevance.

Rise of Structured Data and the Knowledge Graph: Structured data markup has become increasingly important for enhancing search visibility and providing richer search results. By implementing schema.org vocabulary, websites can provide search engines with explicit clues about the meaning of their content, going beyond just the words themselves. This allows search engines to better categorize and index information, leading to more informative search results, including rich snippets, knowledge panels, and other enhanced features. This structured data feeds into the Google Knowledge Graph, a massive knowledge base that connects entities and their relationships. Websites that leverage structured data effectively can improve their visibility in search results and enhance their presence in the Knowledge Graph, leading to greater brand authority and user engagement.

Zigmas Pekarskas, fresh after the Chiang Mai SEO Conference 2024, shared some intriguing behind-the-scenes insights on the future of SEO. Having spoken personally with industry leaders like Nick Eubanks, Koray Tugberk, Kyle Roof, Karl Kangur, and Jason Hennessey, Zigmas Pekarskas revealed some of the whispers and predictions circulating among top SEO professionals. And shared some of the information that usually stays behind closed doors.

Factors That Still Matter:

- Backlinks: High-quality backlinks from authoritative and relevant websites remain a crucial ranking factor.

- Answering User Intent Quickly: Providing concise and direct answers to user queries is essential for improving user experience and search rankings.

- Technical Optimization: Technical SEO, including site speed, crawling, indexing, schemas, mobile-friendliness, and security, is vital.

- New SEO Philosophy: Saving Google Money: Koray Tugberk, a prominent figure in the SEO community, emphasizes the importance of semantic SEO and topical authority. This approach involves understanding how search engines interpret language and connect entities to deliver relevant results. However, there's a deeper layer to this philosophy: aligning SEO strategies with Google's own business goals. Google aims to provide users with the most relevant and helpful information while maximizing its own efficiency and revenue. To understand this, SEO professionals need to optimize their websites by thinking about how to save money for Google.  

Future SEO Predictions:

Rise of Black Hat SEO in the Age of AI: While AI offers numerous benefits for ethical SEO practices, it also presents new opportunities for black hat SEO tactics. The ability to generate vast amounts of content quickly and automate various tasks can be exploited to create massive networks of websites, generate fake news and reviews, and manipulate search rankings. AI can even be used to bypass CAPTCHA detection and create sophisticated spider traps to deceive search engine crawlers. For example, AI-powered tools can generate thousands of unique articles with spun content, create fake social media profiles and engagement signals, and automate link-building schemes at an unprecedented scale.

Brand Protection: The use of AI in SEO is rapidly increasing, and with it, the potential for negative SEO attacks. These attacks can involve tactics like generating spammy backlinks, creating fake negative reviews, or overloading a competitor's website with artificial traffic.

While Google is working to combat these tactics, businesses need to be proactive in protecting their brand. The problem is that very few SEO specialists possess a deep understanding of the combined technologies and strategies required to protect against or recover from such attacks.

Brand Value and Trust Metrics: AI is a double-edged sword in the realm of SEO. While it simplifies content creation, it also makes it easier to generate low-quality content, fake information, and manipulate search results. As the volume of online information explodes, potentially increasing 100-fold in the coming years, Google will face the critical challenge of determining trustworthiness and authenticity. This could lead to a greater score on trust and authority signals over content, technical, and other signals. This shift could result in a significant portion of the internet being de-indexed or devalued, with established brands and recognizable entities gaining prominence in search results.