SEO » Search engine optmization » Google Hummingbird update 2013
Google’s Hummingbird a new algorithm in details – what will
happen with any search engine optimization SEO?
Google introduced in September 2013 its brand new algorithm known as Hummingbird algo change, making countless SEO companies curious and many unanswered questions – what need to this algorithm can do for any kind of web site? To help to make sure you don’t get straight down into panic attacks and prepare your SEO strategy properly, i wrote below up this simple guide to demonstrate what Hummingbird update is, how it has an effect on your rankings and exactly how to modify your SEO technique to gain from the adjustments.
So, what do we know about Hummingbird?
Though announced on September 26 only, Hummingbird was in fact released a month before that and is said to affect 90% of search queries.
Compared with Penguin and Panda, Hummingbird is not a consequence-based up-date (aimed at cleanup the SERPs through low-level of quality content), but a transform in the way Google responds to several types of queries, which usually lets the search engine right now get the actual significance behind a query, instead than the individual phrases in it.
In addition to, the algorithm is referred to as to better option with speaking questions, taking into consideration the increasing number of mobile search customers as well as voice searchers.
So Hummingbird is all about Google being able to catch users’ actual search intent and find the content that matches this intent the best.
But what does this mean for Internet marketers and SEO?
Effectively, it indicates a few issues become more and more more significant, and initially of all – the written content on your website. The name of the performance is relevance and your own written content needs to be strong and rich, instead than just nonsense loaded with keywords and phrases.
Now to get a better idea of how to adapt your digital marketing strategy to that change, you need to understand which mechanisms Google probably uses to achieve the relevance goal and what each of them means for your site.
- 1. Adapt your keyword strategy for conversational queries
What’s happening? The first challenge Google has to deal with today is the growing number of conversational phrases people use to search the Web. Quite likely (and that is especially true for mobile voice search users), these queries will be of a longer, question-like type – “how to…?”, “where is the nearest…?”, “where can I get…?”, etc.
Interpreting these longer phrases, Google can no longer rely on the keywords only and provide different results for each of them. But getting many issues to a tighter “common term”, primarily based on the kind of searchers’ intent:
Informational
- The user wanders “How old is Miley Cyrus?”, so..
- The user wants general information about Miley Cyrus, so…
- The users will find that info in Miley Cyrus biography
Navigational
- The user looks for “What is the official website of waec”, so..
- The user wants to get to a relevant website, so..
- The user needs results for that relevant information,
Transactional
- The user is searchng for “Where can i find the most nearest Starbucks”, so.
- The user wants to locate and visit the nearest Starbucks, so.
- The users will find it using Starbucks locator
What should you do? Try determining all conversational phrases people are likely to use when searching for your services, and classify them into informational, navigational and transactional.
Make sure your content covers each of the 3 types:
- To include informative requests, create educative, wikipedia-type written content..
- Navigational requests are your own brand name, your product or service name, the brand of your website, etc. Precisely what often allows you rank better for your brand keywords and phrases are brand and web site name describes on thematically related information..
- For transactional inquiries, use suitable keywords in your written content, for instance “hire John Bertrand. – an SEO expert with years of experience”
When possible, target conversational phrases just as they are. For all the rest of conversational terms, use their shorter equivalents.
2. Leverage synonyms and co-occurring terms
What’s happening? Another step towards relevant search results is determining what a page is about using not only individual keywords, but their synonyms and co-occurring terms.
Basically this indicates that Google presents search results not just for the specific phrase the individual entered in, but for additional theme-related phrases.
For a theme-relevant website, this results in extra exposure opportunities: it’s likely to get to Google’s top not only for your targeted keywords, but for lots of their synonyms.
On the contrary, the page cut for a separate keyword (without keeping in mind its co- occurring terms and synonyms) is likely to be replaced with a page form theme-relevant site.
What should you do?
- Expand your keyword research, focusing on synonyms and co-occurring terms to diversify your content:
- To see what search terms Google takes into account synonymous, pay particular attention to relevant keywords, acronyms as well as spelling alternatives of your keywords outlined in search end results:
Expand your synonyms list with the keywords that already bring traffic to your website (check your site’s Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics).
Tap into Google Suggest for relevant keywords ideas:
3. Strive for co-citation
What’s happening? Another way for Google to identify what your website or your business deals with is co-citation.
In a simple language, this mechanism means that each time your brand (or a link to your site) is mentioned alongside with your competitors or similar web resources, this serves as a hint to Google that your firm and those other companies are related.
And if the competitors are already authoritative in your business niche, your site for Google now also seems a weighty niche representative.
Example. If your website (1) is mentioned on websites A, B and C together with your competitors (2, 3 and 4), for Google the 4 websites become associated (see the scheme):
What really should you do? Determine your top rivals (the biggest niche specialists trustworthy by Google) and make certain your brand gets described together with with them:
- Perform a Google search for “Top 10 [the generic term for your biz]…”, “Best [the generic term for your product] of 2013”, etc. If your business isn’t there, reach out to the publisher and ask them to put you on the list.
- Research for other competitive brands ranking higher for your keywords and phrases, to find much more citation possibilities.
- Reverse-engineer competitors’ backlink user user profiles to see that niche information they incorporate links returning from.
4. your anchor texts
What’s happening?
Even even though using “industrial” anchor texts in hyperlinks is one particular of the most significant SEO no-no’s these days, Google still depends on backlink anchor texts to much better understand the theme of a website.
The perfect proof for that is the famous example of Adobe.Com that (still!) ranks for “click here” solely due to the anchor texts in its links:
What should you do?
- Perform an inventory of your website’s internal links and discover if you can much better optimize the exact anchor texts for LSI semantically related keywords and phrases.
- Check your site’s external links’ anchors to make sure they are relevant enough or revise your anchor text strategy.
- Don’t forget to not only use keywords in the anchor texts themselves, but also surround the links with keywords and their synonyms.
5. Pay more attention to Universal Search listings
What’s happening?
One more thing to pay your attention to in the age of smarter Google is Universal search.
Quite likely that the new, relevancy-focused algorithm will make Google show more Universal search results to your target users.
Say, Google sees your intent – learning the best way to work out your chest. Quite obviously, the most informative result for you is a training video:
If you wonder where to buy pizza in Chicago, no doubt you need local pizzerias listings:
This means that now, even more than before, Universal Search gives you the opportunity to:
- Outrank competitors when cracking the “organic” top 10 seems improbable
- Drive more traffic to your site by using additional traffic channels
What should you do?
- See what types of search results appear on Google for your main keywords
- Consider the possibility of getting a Google+ Local listing
- Optimize your images for Google Images
- Make videos and optimize them for YouTube
6. Utilize structured data markup
What’s happening?
To collect more info about your website, its theme and content, Google is likely to pay even more attention to the so-called structured data. That is a perfect way to get extra exposure in Google’s Knowledge graph, add more info to rich snippets, feature your articles authorship, get into the search results carousel and so on.
What should you do?
- Make sure you use maximum number of structured data properties, that let Google know more about your site (use Google+ for Google authorship, get listed in Freebase to increase your chances of hopping on the Knowledge Graph, etc.)
- To help Google make better sense of your site, whenever possible, try implementing schema on your site (use Schema.org markup for Videos, use Organized Data Markup Helper towards Google recognize more regarding movies, events, and so on. on your website).
- Use Structured Data Testing Tool to make sure Google interprets structured data correctly on your webpages.
- Make sure your site is all set for Hummingbird!
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