Ever since Google announced changes to its algorithm in September, there’s been hardly a web site owner concerned about its presence in search results that hasn’t been trying to get its head around Hummingbird, estimated to affect over 90% of Google’s search results. And with Google’s percentile market share for search still holding strong, how results appear on Google should be the first consideration to any webmaster concerned about traffic. However, it’s worth noting that Hummingbird had been live for around a month prior to its announcement, so that it should be viewed as part of an ongoing refinement, rather than a sea change.
Keyword stuffing a thing of the past
While keywords of course still matter – you can’t have a search without words, after all – their weight is going to be limited by Hummingbird’s assessment of relevance in the context of a given question. Keyword stuffing is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and only faster as Google evolves. So how do you optimise your search results if you are, for example, one guy among many selling T-shirts? The answer – and this is hard to automate – is going to be content quality. As the Google bot gets ever wiser at canvassing the web, it’s going to be looking not just for who can put “T-Shirt†the most times on a page, but who can provide usable information about what the T-Shirt is made of, where it’s made, whether it’s sustainable, what the cost is, colour options, etc. Content is going to be the start of a virtuous circle of driving web traffic under the new search regime.
Introducing conversational search
Conversational search is a huge area where Hummingbird is thought to have altered the search landscape. To be clear, literal conversation through a mic with a computer – although that now does exist in limited form with Chrome – is not the subject here, but a conversational style of search. Everyone’s noticed that Google, for some time now, has been suggesting completed phrases when one begins to type in a search query. However, the algorithms behind those suggestions have become highly sophisticated. Google actually filed several patents that are thought to contain hints about Hummingbird’s strength in this area, most importantly having to do with synonym identification. Google’s search really will be smarter; to go back to the poor T-shirt seller looking for a web presence, Hummingbird might return a great result for “Where can I go for a fair T-shirt,†having done the work to assume that the “Where†refers to a seller, and “fair†is a shortcut for “fair trade,†or even “non sweatshop.†Google won’t just return a suggestion based on the overall prevalence of a search term, but will customise it more than ever based on where you’re sitting, the phrase you’re typing, and presumably – and this is often overlooked – what your social network is like. Â
Keep an eye on Google+
The hard truth is that Google Plus is often an afterthought as a social network, given the dominance of Facebook socially and LinkedIn professionally. However, if that T-shirt seller is followed on Google Plus by a few hundred of his associates, and expands his network through them, his results could be more likely to show up in a search for T-shirts. It’s as simple as this: you give Google more information about yourself, your relationships, and your networks, and Google now has the ability to ratchet up your rank in search. So anyone looking to optimise in the current environment would be well-served to build actual human relationships, putting in place a social network of which Google has full awareness in place of frowned-upon link farming.
Google takes a dim view of link farmers
While this may seem a thing of the past, it is worth mentioning that in today’s environment, too many links are another SEO black hat method that is going the way of the dodo. Google takes a dim view of link farmers. So how do you go about optimising you website for organic search if too many ill-thought-out links will hurt you, and your content and network are new? A simple way is to study the link patterns of those sites that are at the top of the search engines for the keywords you want to rank high for. Tools like Open Site Explorer is a particular good tool for studying link patterns.
Build natural networks
Hummingbird has given rise to a lot of chatter in recent months. However, while Google is getting better and better and producing intuitive search results, this is not a case of reinventing the wheel. It’s an opportunity for content providers everywhere to step up their games. It’s a reason to think about truly conversational search, especially in a landscape where keyword stuffing your articles is a thing of the past. It’s a motivator to actually pick up the phone, write an email, or otherwise build out a real, human network on a social media network such as Twitter or LinkedIn. Google’s newest innovation actually is looking to return us to our roots: less automation, and more of a human touch. A welcomed change.
Fatpublisher provide Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services to our clients. If you are interested in finding out about our social media packages, please contact us.
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