Let’s debunk this one once and for all, shall we.

Google [Search] is in the business of doing one thing, and doing it better than anyone else on the planet: Providing people with search results that are relevant to them for given keywords and/or phrases [whether they are succeeding at this is another question all together]. That’s it. If Google fails to deliver on this one simple objective, people will leave en masse, and so they are constantly fighting the battle to provide these ultra-relevant results.

Google has the search “thing” under control [for now]. At least in terms of owning the lion’s share of eyeballs, which is what should matter to most businesses. It’s less important, as businesses, that we spend the bulk of our time chasing after the details, and more important that we first wrap our heads around the sweeping changes that are underway on the web.

We’ve outlined a handful of things you should have your eye on when creating content moving into the future:

SEO is dying.

As the web quickly grows to its social maturity, it is these social triggers that will far outshine and overshadow SEO tactics like proper keyword density. Think about it. When searching for “The best restaurant in Dallas” would you rather see results based on what eatery has hired the best SEO to optimize their site, or results based on the opinions of people you have personally indicated that you trust from Dallas and/or from the restaurant review world.

It’s a no-brainer, right?

There’s a good reason why Google has acquired Frommers’s and Zagat in recent months, they see this social shift taking place, they are reacting to where the web is moving, they’ve got the search “thing” under control.

It’s time we stop writing for bots, and start writing for people.

This is not a new concept. The very best of online marketers, like Brian Clark of Copyblogger, have been preaching it to whoever would listen for the last 5+ years now. The internet “goes” where the people go, not the other way around.

The reason your business has a FaceBook page is because there are 900,000,000+ people there. Let’s not kid ourselves.

And people are spending an increasing portion of their time with the places providing the most relevant content to them, not the places that necessarily rank at the very top of search results. That’s what FaceBook does so well. After all, what could be more relevant to you than seeing what your personal friends and acquaintances are up to?

Content creation is more about listening and less about telling.

People are still interested in content outside of social media. They want to learn from the authorities in whatever topics they might be interested in, whether it is in their personal or professional lives. They want to develop a relationship with them over time. Building this report with your readership is just not something that SEO can accomplish, and is not something we should rely on search engines to do for us.

Instead, it is critical that we begin to spend more time interacting with our readers, tailoring our content to fit their wants and needs. In doing so you will build the type of real authority Google [among other search newcomers that, many have argued, may have already surpassed them] is doing their damnedest to integrate into their search algorithms, the changes that are causing traditional SEO’s to lose sleep.

Back to the future.

Those succeeding in creating the most compelling content today look a whole lot more like David Ogilvy than they do Larry Page. It is those who can craft stories that reach and speak to their well-defined customer persona who are on the right track for long-term conversion and retention of those customers.