Content Development: Hummingbird Google Update -– Small, But Mighty
Google loves animals. The dominant search engine’s last three major algorithm updates have been Panda in 2011, Penguin in 2012, and Hummingbird in late 2013. Actually, Panda is named after the technician who developed it, but the animal angle is more fun.
To make a very long story very short, Panda primarily dealt with spam and Penguin revised the appropriate ways to acquire backlinks.
Hummingbird is an entirely different breed, on several levels. Arguably, the most impacting update from Google since 2001, Hummingbird uses the company’s extensive Knowledge Graph to anticipate the intent of a search term.
Before this change, if you wanted to find an SEO company in Eureka, California, for example, you might enter something like, “search engine optimization eureka ca.” The results that would appear on the first SERP (search engine results page) would heavily factor in website pages that contained that exact phrase with a prescribed number of occurrences. This applied equally to national and local search marketing.
SEO Strategies Post Hummingbird
What Google is now attempting to accomplish is to interpret the phrase that users input and return results based upon what it “senses” is most appropriate. And, in Google’s eyes the most appropriate results will be those websites that provide relevant, quality content regardless of whether or not there are any exact match keywords. Expect a website with multiple pages of well-conceived copy to rise above those obviously written around specific keywords.
Much of Google’s reasoning has to do with the fact that we are now using our voices for search rather than always typing the term. This tends to lead to lengthier and more varied terms with more specific results.
So, Why Bother with Keyword Analysis?
That is not to say that keyword research is in any way dead. You still must know the phrases and terms that people are using to find your products and services. It’s just that now synonyms will work equally well. No longer do you need to be concerned with whether you use terms such as car or automobile; bike or bicycle; search engine optimization or SEO.
Google’s Keyword Planner is a terrific, free way to conduct effective keyword analysis. It offers a great deal of versatility that was lacking with the previous Keyword Tool. The only snag is that you now must have an AdWords account set up to use it. No problem; it is fast and easy to do the set up. You do not have to actually use AdWords to get access to the Keyword Planner and the time spent setting it up is worthwhile if you do nothing more than run keyword analysis.
This Is Good News, Right?
Yes, it is. The fact that the search engines now can better connect an intended search with quality results means that your well-researched and interesting content has a better chance of landing on the first page, without having to conform to prescribed rules. However, it also means that if you had great results in the past and find your website now bumped from the first to the fifth page, you may need some professional help to regain that position.
You most definitely need quality content.