Hummingbird: SEO is Now Blogging

Hummingbird in the field. What will his probing yield?

No fake flowers, that's for sure. Its aim is true and will not blur.

Google has unleashed its new Hummingbird semantic search engine.

Hummingbird is Google's first major new search engine platform since 2001. SEO is now completely different and far more laborious. It means keeping up with, and grinding out answers to, customer questions that are flying at you relentlessly.

It's an entirely new search engine that has new laws and deeper motivations. Hummingbird is hoped to be the ultimate in delivering fantastic search results, while outsmarting black hats, junk websites, and spammers.

It comes simultaneously with the total blackout on keyword referrer data, that Google used to provide, showing you what keywords people are using in searches. Without keyword data, SEO can no longer be dominated by keyword ranking.

Hummingbird shifts the SEO focus from keywords to user intention. "Find polish to clean my silver necklace": keyword focus says "silver necklace" is the primary topic, but intent focus says "wants to clean it" is the real theme. Keyword SEO might return web pages trying to sell you a silver necklace, while Hummingbird SEO will know the true purpose of the search behavior and return far better results to the searcher.

Hummingbird is faster, smarter, intuitive. It can quickly probe the dark swamps and bleak deserts of the internet and extract the nectar. Semantic nectar that other search engines are not capable of finding. It's actually an AI (artificial intelligence) application. It analyzes at lightning speed the semantics of a search query, rather than matching query keywords with keyword skewed web content. Also, it can interpret voice search commands in natural language. Voice search tends to be more wordy, awkward, using jumbled keywords, imprecise keywords, or no keywords at all.

Google wants to, in every possible case, give you the answer to your question WITHOUT you having to see any search results pages or clicking on any websites. It's called Clickless Searching. Eventually, Google may be this Universal Digital Brain Soul with all the information on its own servers, so the web will vanish, leaving only Google with all the facts it gets from newsfeeds and social media.

Hummingbird basically means grinding out new web pages on long tail topics and converting existing web content into an FAQ or compelling narrative format in natural, conversational, spoken language.

How old and moldy is your web content? Is it bullet lists and brochureware, or is it friendly and conversational? Is it informative, or just promotional? Is your web content interesting or just technically correct? Can you expand your FAQ page? Why not develop an FAQ page for every product and every topic and issue related to your field of expertise? That would increase your perceived authority value.

Does your website have strong calls to action on every page? Is it mobile friendly? Have you tested it on a variety of browsers, operating systems, live devices, and mobile emulators? Is your website HTML5 code implementing Schema.org semantic markup — and H1, title, and meta description tags to identify webpage themes?

In what ways does your web content reflect the latest, smartest, or most talked about developments, innovations, and facts? Are you using comments, social sharing buttons on all your web pages, interactive widgets, and forums to facilitate audience engagement with the content? Is your web content spewing product stats and fluff, or is it telling a fascinating story about how to solve a problem and what differentiates you from competitors?

Google prefers "hot off the press" content that is helping people, explaining things, engaging with an audience — not boasting about the organization and hyping product.

In a nutshell, in our new Hummingbird environment, SEO is now blogging.

READ MORE:

www.infoworld.com/t/search-engines/googles-new-hummingbird-algorithm-about-queries-not-just-seo-227732

www.searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816

www.inc.com/aaron-aders/how-to-strategize-for-googles-hummingbird.html

www.streetfightmag.com/2013/10/11/gauging-hummingbirds-impact-on-local-seo/

www.thefinancialbrand.com/34488/google-hummingbird-search-engine-rankings/

www.reelseo.com/googles-hummingbird-video-seo/

About the Author

Steven Streight is a man of many skills. He’s a talented writer, web content developer, internet marketing consultant and photographer. He’s a trustee on the Peoria Historical Society, a member of SCORE Peoria and the author of the Peoria technology history book, “Bicycle Fever.” In his downtime, he’s hangs out with his beloved Min Pin and tries to get some rest. Considering how involved he is in the community, it sounds like he could use as much as he can get.