First there were Penguins, then there were Pandas, and now we have Hummingbirds.
The biodiversity of Google is remarkable indeed, but how has its new algorithm affected the search engine’s ecosystem?
The swathe of updates to Google’s algorithm in the past have placed it in the role of a predator hunting down ‘low quality sites’ and slicing their traffic by up to 50%.
Despite marking the biggest change to Google’s search functionality in 10 years, Hummingbird has been described as pretty harmless compared to its predecessors.
Or is it? It may seem harmless but there are still things sites should avoid at all costs to stay out of Google’s bad books.
1. Provide useless content
Google’s algorithm may have had an overhaul but that doesn’t mean you can let the quality of your content slide. Quality and page rank are just two of over 200 ‘ingredients’ that make up Hummingbird, so it’s crucial to keep your content on top form.
The series of algorithm updates have placed more of an emphasis on high quality content as the best SEO technique, rather than going over the top with keywords. Head of webspam at Google, Matt Cutts, has assured marketers that general advice remains the same in this arena, so valuable and engaging content is the way to go.
2. Stick to the same old format
Mixing it up is refreshing not only to readers and clients but also for content writers; it’s a win-win-win. How often do you include long-tail questions in your content? Or lay content out in a question and answer format?
With the arrival of Hummingbird, you should be making a sustained effort to tap into long-tail searches. Traditional search engine techniques focused on finding matches for words, whereas Hummingbird is designed to dig beneath the surface and focus on the meaning behind these words.
It pays more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the entire query is accounted for in a search as opposed to certain words, bringing up pages that are the best possible matches for the meaning.
SEO consultant Andrew Shortland summarises nicely what marketers should be doing in this respect. Speaking to VentureBeat, he said:
“Hummingbird is forcing website owners to ask, ‘How can I answer questions that customers are asking Google?’ This is really no different from what SEO people are already recommending.”
Google told searchengineland.com that the name Hummingbird comes from being “precise and fast”. They may have been referring to the algorithm but it could equally apply to question and answer content formats and the new focus on long-tail questions – your content should be providing relevant information that answers reader’s queries fast.
3. Pack in keywords
Google has increasingly been cracking down on ‘keyword stuffing’ so it’s something you should be shying away from anyway.
However, this is even more pertinent as Hummingbird builds its nest in the heart of Google. The new algorithm represents a shift away from keywords and towards semantics, which is far more useful to readers.
Content that is jam-packed with keywords written by someone with SEO at the forefront of their mind is not going to cut it. Or, as Cutts puts it, the search engine’s present and future is “about things, not strings”.
