There is a big push, of course, to run hard core SEOs out of Dodge. We mess things up for the rest of the Web by focusing on keywords, links, and such. But if it weren’t for keywords then a lot of people wouldn’t be making any money online. AdSense entrepreneurs is one group I can think of right off the bat.
AdSense, of course, is the publisher side of online pay per click advertising. Publishers create content and slap AdSense on the pages where that content is displayed. The ads match the keywords that make up that content page and some of those people are making a ton of money.
Pay per click advertisers write their ads around certain keywords so that they can ensure a proper targeted campaign. But what if natural language wins out and keyword-rich content goes by the wayside? How will pay per click advertising be conducted then?
It is likely that such advertising would still utilize some kind of tagging system that relies upon advertisers and publishers agreeing on broad definitions of tags. While keywords may not be important any more, the ideas behind those keywords will be. They are now. They’ll be more so after keywords are gone. That is what the discussion behind natural language, or semantic search, is all about.
To be honest with you, I’m not sure how feasible that is right now. I’m positive that, at some point in the future, it will happen. But when is anybody’s guess. Until then, pay per click advertisers are stuck with doing keyword research. Since keywords are still important, you might as well make the effort to get the best keywords for you campaigns.
