Google to boost mobile-friendly algorithm this May

Google announced on the Webmaster blog that they are going to be boosting the effects of themobile-friendly algorithm they launched back on April 21, 2015.

Google said the update will happen “beginning in May,” and it “increases the effect of the [mobile-friendly] ranking signal.” Google said if you are already mobile-friendly, you do not have to worry, because “you will not be impacted by this update.”

When the update happens, it will roll out gradually, so you won’t see a major drop-off on non-mobile-friendly websites when the algorithm is pushed out. This kind of sounds like the slow Panda 4.2 rollout, but it is unclear if the rollout will take weeks or months. Google just said it would “start rolling out” the update in the beginning of May.

The mobile-friendly algorithm is a page-by-page signal, so it can take time for Google to assess each page, and that may be why it will be a gradual rollout. And depending on how fast Google crawls and indexes all of the pages on your site, the impact can be slow to show up.

It is believed that this rollout will have less impact than the original mobile-friendly update, which was called “Mobilegeddon.” The original Mobilegeddon was supposed to have a significant impact on the mobile results, but not everyone said it had that much of an impact.

If you are not mobile-friendly, or if you want to ensure you are, check the Google mobile-friendly tool, and check Google’s mobile guidelines.

Why real-time search algorithm updates may be bad news

Every update of Panda and Penguin in recent years has brought joy to some SEOs and sorrow to others. As the algorithms become real-time, the job of an SEO will become harder, and I wonder if Google has really thought of the consequences of these updates.

So, what potential issues may arise as a result of faster algorithm updates?

Troubleshooting algorithmic penalties

Algorithmic penalties are a lot more difficult to troubleshoot than manual actions.

With a manual action, Google informs you of the penalty via the Google Search Console, giving webmasters the ability to address the issues that are negatively impacting their sites. With an algorithmic penalty, they may not even be aware that a problem exists.

The easiest way to determine if your website has suffered from an algorithmic penalty is to match a drop in your traffic with the dates of known algorithm updates (using a tool like Panguin).

In the screenshot below, you can clearly see the two hits for Penguin back in May and October of 2013 with Penguin 2.0 and 2.1.

Without analytics history, you look for traffic drops using tools that estimate traffic (such asSEMrush), although the traffic drops may also be from website redesigns or other changes. The site below has had their traffic depressed for over a year because of Penguin 3.0, which hit in October of 2014.

For possible link penalties, you can use tools like Ahrefs, where you can see sudden increases in links or things like over-optimized anchor text.

In the screenshot below, the website went from only a couple of dozen linking domains to more than 2,000 in a very short period of time — a clear indicator that the site was likely to be penalized.

Another easy way to determine if there is an algorithmic penalty is to see if a site ranks high in Maps but poorly for organic for different phrases. I’ve seen this many times, and sometimes it goes undiagnosed by companies for long periods of time.

Unfortunately, without having the dates when major updates occurred, SEOs will need to look at a lot more data — and it will be a lot more difficult to diagnose algorithmic penalties. With many companies already struggling to diagnose algorithmic penalties, things are about to get a lot tougher.

Misdiagnosis and confusion

One of the biggest problems with the real-time algorithm updates is the fact that Google’s crawlers don’t crawl pages at the same frequency. After a website change or an influx of backlinks, for example, it could take weeks or months for the site to be crawled and a penalty applied.

So even if you’re keeping a detailed a timeline of website changes or actions, these may not match up with when a penalty occurs. There could be other issues with the server or website changes that you may not be aware of that could cause a lot of misdiagnosis of penalties.

Some SEO companies will charge to look into or “remove” penalties that don’t actually exist. Many of the disavow files that these companies submit will likely do more harm than good.

Google could also roll out any number of other algorithmic changes that could affect ranking, and SEOs and business owners will automatically think they have been penalized (because in their minds, any negative change is a penalty). Google Search Console really needs to inform website owners of algorithmic penalties, but I see very little chance of that happening, particularly because it would be giving away more information about what the search engines are looking for in the way of negative factors.

Negative SEO

Are you prepared for the next business model of unscrupulous SEO companies? There will be big money in spamming companies with bad links, then showing companies these links and charging to remove them.

The best/worst part is that this model is sustainable forever. Just spam more links and continue charging to remove. Most small business owners will think it’s a rival company or perhaps their old SEO company out to get them. Who would suspect the company trying to help them combat this evil, right?

Black hat SEO

There’s going to be a lot more black hat testing to see exactly what you can get away with. Sites will be penalized faster, and a lot of the churn-and-burn strategy may go away, but then there will be new dangers.

Everything will be tested repeatedly to see exactly what you can get away with, how long you can get away with it, and exactly how much you will have to do to recover. With faster updates, this kind of testing is finally possible.

Will there be any positives?

On a lighter note, I think the change to real-time updates is good for the Google search results, and maybe Googler Gary Illyes will finally get a break from being asked when the next update will happen.

SEOs will soon be able to stop worrying about when the next update will happen and focus their energies on more productive endeavors. Sites will be able to recover faster if something bad happens. Sites will be penalized faster for bad practices, and the search results will be better and cleaner than ever. The black hat tests will likely have positive results on the SEO community, giving us a greater understanding of the algorithms.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

New Kid Alert: How to Drive Sales to Your Business Using Snapchat

200 million.

That’s the number of monthly users on Snapchat. And, they send 400 million snaps every day!

That’s staggering, right?

What’s more amazing is the high engagement on Snapchat. A user spends an average of 25 to 30 minutes (per day) which translates to 8 billion video views daily. This video love is equivalent to Facebook’s activity, with ten times the user base.

Many social media platforms have passed by as a fad. But, this kid, born in 2011, has had incredible growth and engagement numbers that beat Twitter, Pinterest and even the social giant, Facebook.

Snapchat is now a leader in privacy social media and it seeks real-time attention. These two USPs have stopped many marketers from adopting the social platform.

Why?

It’s because social media was inherently meant to be shared in public and spontaneously. This is especially true with Snapchat.  And, planned marketing campaigns might not work well on this in-the-moment platform.

But, if you’ve been holding off, you need to take Snapchat seriously. This is incredibly vital, especially if you target the younger demographic – more than 60% of U.S.13 to 34 year-old smartphone users are Snapchatters. Look at the Snapchat app penetration, as per ComScore.

The platform has native tools and amazing inherent capabilities to expand your brand’s reach. Besides, since Snapchat users like a personal touch, you can expect your marketing messages to get an authentic layering.

Want to delight your audience and grow your business using Snapchat?

Then, in this article, I want to outline how businesses like yours are marketing on the platform successfully. Let’s start building your audience on Snapchat. 

1. Announce your Snapcode on other social media platforms and invite your audience to access ‘private’ content

Remember how I predicted that social media would become a largely paid marketing medium in 2016?

That might not be true right now for Snapchat, because the starting budget for advertising on the platform is $100,000 (dropped recently from $700,000).

So, if you don’t want to shell out a hundred thousand dollars initially, you’ll have to rely on growing your audience organically, for the time being.

Once you’ve set up your account and downloaded the app, you can tap on the ghost icon at the top of the screen to add friends. On clicking “Add Friends,” you’ll get the following options:

Adding friends is a great way to build your following (much like Twitter users follow you back when you follow them).

A Google search will help you in finding the username/snapcode of your favorite brands and celebrities and you can add them as friends.

You can also search other social platforms for the Snapchat usernames of people that you know.

You can search using a sentence like “follow me on snapchat.” Here’s how a graph search on Facebook will reveal people and brands that have shared their Snapchat presence publically.

A similar search will help you in picking up some more Snapchat peeps from Twitter.

Next, you can announce your Snapchat presence to your current fans and followers on other social media platforms.

Sure, you can send your username. But, a better way of doing it on Snapchat is by sharing your custom Snapcode that functions like a QR code.

Let me quickly show you how to incorporate your profile picture/business logo in the ghost space.

Step 1 – Download a .PNG version of your Snapcode from here.

Step 2 – Change the background color of the Snapcode using Canva (choose a color that suits your brand).

Step 3 – Drag and drop your logo or profile picture within the black dotted boundaries of the white ghost.

Step 4 – Save your new Snapcode as a .PNG or .JPEG.

Now, you can share your username and snapcode with your fans and followers on social media, encouraging them to follow you on Snapchat.

You can also share your Snapcode on your website, alongside other social media accounts or on your About page.

You can also change your profile picture on other social media to this Snapcode to create a buzz and gather more Snapchat friends.

You might want to sign up for the Snapchat Directory, created by Carlos Gill, to discover and add new friends daily.

Besides adding friends and sharing valuable content, a great way to grow your Snapchat audience quickly is:

Creating exclusive Snapchat content that you aren’t providing on other social platforms.

See, Snapchat is a highly personal medium. The app doesn’t allow you to upload a nicely designed image and video.

That’s why the content on Snapchat is raw and shows the personality of the creator. So, you can use Snapchat to build a tightly knit community of brand advocates.

For example, NARS used Snapchat to release an exclusive preview of their new collection.

They started by spreading the news on their Instagram account.

Top 21 SEO Tips and Tricks

Google says on the record, “Don’t write for Search Engines, Write for your readers/audience/users.” While this may sound ridiculous, there are plenty of reasons to follow the advice. More often, newbie falls in the trap and often gets confused where to start from. Don’t sound to be too harsh, but do not always listen to almighty Google.

We (bloggers & web entrepreneurs) are mere small creatures and we must write for our readers/users while keeping search engine behavior at the corner of our brain! Producing great content that reader’s love is something not everyone’s cup of team. So how would you start your venture as an expert ? What are the best SEO practices that you should follow? Without further ado, let me present you top 20 SEO Tips.

Excellent SEO Tips To Follow

I have used an adjective here – Special. These tips are special not because they are something that you have never heard of, but they are special as you have not understood these basic ones quite effectively!

Keyword Analysis inclusive of Competition Analysis

1. Determine Strategy for Keywords

This must be your first and foremost step. You should be clear with your goals that what keywords you want to play around with. This depends on what you want to gain by your online presence and venture. The question in the previous sentence can be answered with information regarding your target audience.

It may look like a flow chart or catch 22 for you, don’t worry, you are right and it is so. We have solutions for it. You can use certain keyword tools like www.keywordspy.com, www.spyfu.com, www.ispionage.com and www.compete.com. In order to get complete market scenario you must look at your competitor’s website. You can enter that website’s URL to any of the mentioned tools and get an estimation of competition.

2. List The Potential Keywords

You have now, different results from different tools as all of them use different methodology. You can collaborate all the results depending on your common analytical sense and list out 50-100 potential keywords. Create an MS Excel sheet for these Keywords.

3. Check Competition of Keywords

Keyword competition is something most newbies/expert ignores. While sorting out bunch of keywords from Google adword keywords tool is the first step to follow, people often forget that the checking Keyword competition is equally important. There are plenty of tools available out there, but we recommend to try out tools like Traffictravis first.

Later, you can go for the premium tools like SEOMoz keyword difficulty and SERPIQ keyword competition analysis tool. Both the tools delivers the great result and cut down considerable work required in doing competition analysis as well as keyword competition analysis.

On Page SEO Tips

4. HTML

Use a content management service such as WordPress, Blogger or Drupal and optimize your HTML tags with the keywords. Make sure you also maintain text to HTML ratio. Always try to keep the ratio high so that Google can understand your content better.

5. Title

Keep the character count under 70 and preferably under 66. Use various plugins available for various content management platforms for SEO. The WordPress beginners should start with WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to make on page SEO as much better as they can. There are also many third-party paid options available in the market, but we do not recommend using them.

Also see : How to write a best SEO title tag to get maximum benefit in Search results

6. Meta Tags & Description

Your keyword must be there in your Meta tag and description. Your meta description must be in the vicinity of 157 characters. This is most important as Search Engines read meta description for understanding the post content.

7. URL and/or Permalinks

Your page URL must contain your key word or keyword phrase. If it is a phrase, words must be separated by hyphens. Use some plugins to remove stop words from the URL/permalinks. It’s always good to minimize the use of STOP word in the permalink

8. First Paragraph

While this is not necessary a big factor in ranking, try to include important keyword in first paragraph, so Google can clearly understand what the topic is about. While there is no hard and fast rule, make sure you include primary keyword within first few words of the article.

9. Content Length

As per Guidelines provide by Google, the length of your content must be more than 300 words. We advise you to write content with word count above 500 words. (It will help to protect you from “Animal Hit”). However, we recommend to go over 600-700 mark whenever possible. Instead of writing a simple post without proper information, you should focus your energy to provide quality content with necessary bullet point and images to back-up what you say.

10. Content Quality

Your content must be unique. Thinly copied contents are also getting Panda Hit nowadays so stay away from copy and plagiarism. Make sure you follow proper internal linking strategy without over optimizing anchor text.

Also see : Google Panda Recovery Tips and Tricks

11. Keyword Density

Keyword density must be between 2-4%. It means your keyword must not be repeated more than twice or thrice in each 100 words block so if your are writing a 500 words post your keyword count must not exceed 10-15 repetitions. If it does, then Google will count it as over optimization.

12. Image Optimization

Optimize Image ALT tag with your keyword. It is always a good idea to save the image name with the keyword and upload them on the server with the same name. Also attach necessary ALT tag to the image, so Google can understand what the image depicts. Remember, Google is blind, and you need to supply information to Google to understand the image. Moreover, try to provide a wrap up text to explain what the image is all about. This will increase the relevancy as well.

Sitemap

13. Sitemap Submission

Submit your site to the major search engines. Create an XML site map and make sure the search engines can find your site map. Use Google’s webmaster’s tools to verify your sitemap is being read correctly: http://www.google.com/webmasters/

14. HTML Sitemap

Creating an HTML sitemap is an essential part of your SEO endeavors. This confirms you that search engine crawlers are crawling the site properly.

Back-End

15. Avoid DHTML and Excessive HTML

Search Engines can’t read DHTML menus quite easily, so avoid them in your menu. Also, try to maintain HTML to text ratio. Having too many HTML makes the ratio high which is often undesired. Make sure you provided meaningful insight in each and every paragraph and/or article by providing more text.

16. Avoid Major Content in PDF or Flash

Publish your content in HTML format instead of Adobe PDF and Flash. Valuable content that is locked in these formats cannot be easily crawled and indexed.

17. Robots.txt

Make sure your robots.txt file is configured correctly to include and exclude the appropriate directories and files on your website. This file instructs search engines that which portion of your site is not accessible to search engines. Often people misunderstands this concepts which results in duplicate content or the description is unavailable due to robots.txt configuration.

Off Page Optimization

18. Use Social Media Effectively

Market your content on various social networks and media. Try various titles and descriptions that can engage users with your online venture. Initially, target twitter, Facebook, Google+, Stumble Upon, LinkedIn and Reddit. Google is now giving more importance to social media signals to rank website. Now is the time to utilize social media platform and turn the tale in your favor.

19. Generate Quality Backlinks

There are various techniques to generate backlinks. Guest post on other high authority site from same niche, Commenting on the posts related to your site content, Forum Posting and many more techniques are there which should be used moderetly to gain more trust. Well, backlink is itself a big chapter and can cover tons of pages, but we do not want to go that route for the moment.

Please note that Google introduced an update called Penguin to penalize the overly optimized sites, which means that those sites which are having spam backlinks and using black hat backlink techniques.  I will explain you in detail  how it will identify the spammers, see if there is a site on Diabetes (Health Niche) and the site site owner purchased a bulk of backlinks for the anchor text “diabetes symptoms in children” to rank for that keyword.

This can get a red flag and can get  penalty because if that is a genuine quality site/article then there should be lot of variations in the anchor test linking to that particular page, because it is a common sense that not everybody in the world will link to the exact anchor text right ?  … Yes, that is not at all possible  because they may link to that via various anchor texts like

• diabetes signs and symptoms in children
• diabetes in children
• children and diabetes : signs and symptoms
• what are the symptoms in children with type 2 diabetes
• type 1 diabetes symptoms in children and adults

People (SEOs) even identified alternatives for this as well to spam Google which I am not interested in discussing publicly and if you are interested in knowing them then you can contact me 

Also see : Also see : Google Penguin Recovery Tips and Tricks

Analysis

20. Use Google Analytics

Install Google Analytics on your website.( http://www.google.com/analytics/ )If you’ve already done this, use the data from: Traffic Sources > Keywords to find additional keywords you may want to optimize.

21. Keyword tracking

Tracking your major campaign and keywords in the Google will give you a clear information about your efforts. It’s therefore very necessary to keep track of all your keyword ranking. For this purpose, you can use free and paid tools available online. Even, you can manually track the keyword in the Google. We recommend to use “whatsmyserp.com” or similar service to check your keyword ranking.

Hopefully, the above SEO tips will help you to start your new venture or website. Make sure you follow each and every one of them closely.

Should You Change Your SEO Strategy Because of Google Hummingbird?

If the idea that SEO is dead crosses your mind or turns up in print, dismiss it. The fact is that nothing is really going to change in the way that we pursue the almighty ranking, with the possible exception of the resurgence of the long tail keyword, which was working its way back into our hearts anyway. Everything that worked before Hummingbird’s release will still work moving forward. This includes:

• Original and engaging content is still king
• Legitimate back links that are earned using proper SEO are still important
• The same signals that worked before will continue to garner results
• Keywords will still need to be carefully placed and used in moderation

The only thing that is really going to change in a meaningful enough way to be noticeable is the way Google’s new algorithm interprets the way we search.

Hummingbird Breaks Old Search Habits

Currently, we type our question into the search engine and the algorithm chooses words from it, often sending us on a wild goose chase by bringing up links that have those specific words in them rather than finding links that relate to the context of the overall query.

In essence, Google has trained an entire generation of search engine users to pose questions in short keyword phrases that had little to do with what we wanted. Instead, we tried to guess where Google would take us and hope for the best. They taught us trial and error searching.

Keep in mind, search engines are the ONLY web properties with a goal to have their users spend as little time as possible on their website.

A Glean of Hummingbird Intelligence

With all of the intelligent changes Panda and Penguin brought to the table, it was only a matter of time before one of Google’s big brained developers found a way to “smarten” search engines up enough to take a question and look at the context rather than seeing the words within the query as separate entities. What does this mean for us? With any luck, it means that the Hummingbird is smarter than your average Panda.

So What is Hummingbird?

The Hummingbird is an entirely new algorithm. It approaches search engine queries in a brand new and intelligent way utilizing new technology combined with older features of the existing algorithms. It is named for the speed and accuracy of the tiny bird.

The Resurgence of Long Tailed Keywords

The Hummingbird is what Google is calling the latest (greatest?) algorithm that they slipped in under our radar in August. If the rumors are true, the Hummingbird will take a search engine query using long-tailed keywords and try to decipher the context of the question rather than chase the specific keywords within the question. The goal is to provide results that actually answer the question

The Knowledge Graph

When you think about it, an algorithm that looks for context within a question was inevitable. Google has been up and running for 15 years (as of September), and in that time it has been collecting what could very well be the largest database of knowledge ever recorded.

In theory, the Knowledge Base has collected data for only a short while; however, most people believe differently. To this very moment, knowledge is being gathered, categorized, cross-referenced thousands upon thousands of ways, and stored. This vast well of knowledge is available to the Hummingbird.

With such a Knowledge Graph, was it not inevitable that Google would eventually find a way to utilize this information with an algorithm that deciphers the context of all the words in a query rather than homing in on a few key words therein? This is exactly what Hummingbird is designed to do.

Was Hummingbird Really A Surprise?

This new algorithm may have surprised the majority, but many people saw it coming. These are the people who use Google’s Conversational Search. The reason so many were caught off guard by Hummingbird is that very few paid that much attention when Conversational Search was rolled out nearly two years ago.

For those who do not know about Conversational Search, which is most of us, here is what you missed, which may have been the biggest hint to date that Google was close to cracking semantic search.

Conversational Search

Users of Google Chrome may have noticed a small microphone icon in the right hand corner of Google’s search box (now on Google search as well). If the user clicks on that microphone (and has configured their computer for it) they may ask aloud the question they would have typed into the search box. The question is then displayed on the search screen, along with the results.

If the answer to the query is in Google’s Knowledge Graph, an Information Card is displayed with the pertinent facts listed along with a list of sites you may visit with more information and hopefully, the answer to your question. What users of “Google Speak” have come to realize is that the more conversational the query, the more information is provided. Did I mention the fact that Google speaks the answer back to you? Pretty cool, huh?

Why did Google Create Hummingbird?

Here are three reasons why Google had to create Hummingbird, and why it now has to perfect it:

1. The ball is already rolling.
2. Google promised answers by creating its very first search engine. The problem is, people are asking questions, not typing in keywords.
3. More and more people are using their mobile devices to search. Google knows how important it is to understand a question, especially when you are driving. Comprehension is not new. It is just refined.

Technology Marches On

Google promised to answer our queries when it created the first algorithm that could answer them in the form of leading us to the answers. It takes this promise very seriously. In all, it has addressed the issue rather admirably. Of course, in providing the websites that hold the answers, it created its own worst problem in how to rank them.

The other problem is in the questions. We have always asked questions and up until now, Google has not answered any of them. It merely shows us where we might get the answers based on some of the words we use and making a guess. Now, Google wants to answer the questions by comprehending them and giving us the right answer the first time out.

Now for the Bad News

There is an aspect of Hummingbird about which no one is really talking. As searchers, we expect Google’s search engine to supply a results page with links to the best websites to answer our questions according to their rank. As websites, we expect to compete for those ranks by using SEO and providing interesting content with what we hope are interesting and thorough answers. What we do not expect is the answer to the questions appearing to the searcher before we get a chance to impress them with our hard work.

That Darn Traffic Stealing Information Card – Hummingbird is supposed to answer the search question. It does this by giving us an answer in the form of an “Information Card” taken from its Knowledge Graph and displaying it right at the top of the results page either above or to the right (sometimes both). While this is new and exciting, it is also a clear message by Google that it does not owe us anything. This uses our intellectual property without the responsibility… Hmmm, food for thought. It also begs the question of how our CRO and CTR will be affected when this is widely spread.

Let’s say you want to know if our president has brothers or sisters. There are plenty of websites that want you to visit them for that information. They work hard, play by the rules, and often, pay an arm and a leg to SEO firms. However, if you type in the question “Does Barrack Obama have brothers and sisters” (Hummingbird in action), here is what you will find at the top and side of the results page. (In Google Chrome):

There are many wonderful websites, CNN included, that want to give us that information and while they are at it, show us what wonderful surprises they have to offer. Unfortunately, Google has already answered my question in the Information Graph. Why should I bother to click on those links when I have the answer right here in front of me? Many of us offer professional information for free and in return hope the visitors will take actions on various CTA’s presented on our website. Is that the end of it? YES and NO, keep reading…

Hummingbird is a People Pleaser

If anyone has been paying attention, nearly every article on the Internet about Hummingbird says nothing about Google trying to please websites. Google is trying to get it right for people who type in questions looking for specific answers. If Google has the answer, why would anyone look any further?

This seems almost like a slap in the face to websites that spend good money – and lots of it – on genuine web marketing trying to get traffic. If we have to compete with other websites for traffic, that is fine. Bring on your best stuff because I am bringing mine. However, if we have to compete with a giant like Google, what chance do we stand, and why should we even bother to try?

Google Never Made Promises to Websites

The truth of the matter is that Google has never in its history promised websites anything more than a fair chance at a good rank using proper SEO. Google, the search engine, has never told anyone that it would never step into the information ring. Everything that Google has done has been for the searcher, not the website with the answers.

SEO is not affected by Hummingbird. You can still improve your ranking in the search engines by always striving to improve your SEO and provide original content (can’t stress that enough). Now, however, you also will have to compete with Google’s Information Cards that may already have the answer to the search in them. At the moment, this just applies to Google Chrome. How long will it be before other browsers find a way to follow suit?

Searched by browser:

How Can We Take Advantage of Hummingbird?

There has been a great deal of worry since the release of Hummingbird. If keywords matter less, long tailed keywords matter more, the ability to answer search engine queries through content matters most, and links are still extremely effective, what can businesses on a tight SEO budget do to increase their exposure? When in doubt, content is always the answer.

Hummingbird is an Invitation to Opportunity – What matters most is giving search engines more opportunities to find you. This means broadening your horizons by expanding the number of entrance pages that answer the questions being posed in your niche. More entrance pages with original content will accomplish several goals that can help with Hummingbird on the prowl:

• More pages that are original offer more opportunities to answer search engine queries
• A wider topic coverage area for your expertise
• The opportunity to introduce more long tail keywords
• Surfing the news websites for your niche and writing creative content from current stories
• Videos are still hot and alluring for those choosing links with answers to their questions
• Infographics draw the curious and are a great way to answer search engine queries in a creative and attractive manner

The Hummingbird Algorithm Opens Doors – In essence, nothing changes unless you have not been doing the things that you should be doing to be noticed. Creativity is what is needed if your business wants to compete in an incredibly competitive keyword market. Original content needs to be produced as often as possible.

If your business is to grow, the website and its corresponding blog needs to grow. The same thing that worked before, should still work with Hummingbird, especially if the content contains the answers to current topics from which questions may arise. All of these things still work:

• Surfing the news websites for your niche and writing creative content from current stories
• Videos are still hot and alluring for those choosing links with answers to their questions
• Infographics draw the curious and are a great way to answer search engine queries in a creative and attractive manner

Hummingbird and the Opportunity for More Exposure – When you really think about it, the release of Hummingbird creates the perfect scenario for smaller websites to gain more exposure. The incentive to create more entrance pages and be as creative and daring as larger sites should bring about a new prosperity.

Since branded keyword traffic data has been eliminated through Secure Search and Hummingbird now “gets” search engine queries, the ability to broaden website, blog content, and entrance pages in order to answer more questions is now a vital part of SEO strategy. The Hummingbird’s presence should just be an afterthought.

Hummingbird Do’s and Don’ts

One of the mistakes that some webmasters have made already is to hit the panic button and attack their existing content. There is really no need to go through your entire site making changes to content or anchor text to reflect a “How To…” overhaul in order to attract Hummingbird’s attention. The only thing that this can lead to is disaster.

If you have good, original content, revamping it may only make matters worse. You open the door to mistakes and may only ruin perfectly good content. The best thing to do is balance your content moving forward, making sure to be creative while adding some “How To” articles and blog posts liberally. You can tweak your website content to a small degree; just don’t be too obvious about it.

Claim authorship if you have not done so already. If you need to ask what authorship is, you are already behind in the game and need to start doing a little bit of catch up. Here is the deal… Google loves Google. If your website and corresponding blog is not already tied to your Google+ account, it needs to be.

Tying your efforts to Google+ allows your content efforts to be seen in the work section of your plus account by everyone in your circles, which should be half of the planet’s population. Check out this link for details on how you can take control of your Google authorship.

Do not do anything that would appear to be an overt move to take advantage of any new Google rollout. Think about this for a moment: Google rolls out a new algorithm, the largest single change since 2001, and adds nothing to prevent smart and sly webmasters from taking advantage of it. That is very doubtful.

Do not do anything foolish such as suddenly hiring a link building service that uses less than desired tactics to load you up with how to links or who knows what. Google will surely have a watchdog program for that. Keep it natural and have your company message associated with good quality content. When my clients ask about the core of their marketing plan, I always end up explaining content marketing. This is what everyone should focus on. Simply ask yourself what ifGoogle didn’t exist?

It is always a good idea to take advantage of any and all of the numerous Google services that are offered, mostly free of charge, that will help you to improve your website and blog. Video links on Google owned YouTube.com that teach or answer important questions are a perfect example of taking advantage of Google’s generosity and putting your business website squarely on Google’s Hummingbird map. Interviews with experts in your niche also are a wonderful idea since they are already composed in the question and answer format. Here are some other things that can help:

• Comprehensive FAQ page
• Q&A blog category
• How to posts (in moderation)
• Interviews
• Researches
• Industry debates
• Ask the expert (Are you an expert? Do something with it. Google will love you more.)
• Where can I [complete the sentence]
• Why [complete the sentence]
• What [complete the sentence]

A Brand New Way to Look At Keyword Optimization

If we break down Google’s 15^th anniversary present to the world, we find that it is really just a new way for an algorithm to read search engine queries. Rather than looking at a few of the words within the query, Google’s Hummingbird looks at thecombinations of words and tries to ascertain the true meaning of the search. It then provides a result based on what it believes is the overall question. Does this not, in itself, spell the end of keyword optimization?

Not the End, Just a Change – The answer is no. The keywords within a query are still important. It does strengthen the role of long tailed keywords. However, once we couple the release of Hummingbird with Secure Search, which encrypts the search data of keywords, effectively hiding that information from marketers, we again have to draw the conclusion that Google is trying to reduce the importance of keyword optimization and force webmasters to appease the searcher.

In other words, it is no longer enough to draw any traffic to a website. We have to be more specific and target specific traffic by answering specific questions within the content. This cannot be done with just broad stroke keywords.

Good SEO becomes Good Marketing

One of the most obvious goals of Hummingbird is to turn SEO into marketing. It turns the website’s focus on a broader audience, forcing us to appeal to a wider market of readers. Content has just taken another large step, becoming even more important than the Panda tried to make it.

Could this have been Google’s end game all along, or are we in for an even bigger surprise, possibly included within the updates to Hummingbird that are sure to roll out in the near future? Only time will tell; but with each new release, Google becomes more transparent in its quest to appeal to and appease the public at large and change the way we look at Search Engine Optimization.

Hummingbird Heralds the Evolution of SEO

SEO is not dead, nor is it going away. What SEO is doing is evolving. Like the conductor of a great orchestra, Google is leading us along a road that will undoubtedly lead to its masterpiece. A search engine that understands queries and answers the call of the public’s cry for better search results and providing one search service would be a heck of a thing.

It may even turn out that e-commerce marketers needed to jump through all of the hoops that represent a changing SEO in order to get to the endgame in one piece. Again, we may not know what Google ultimately has in mind until we actually get to the end of the journey. All we know is what is put in front of us along the way.

A Look at Hummingbird and Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are an effective way to search for specific information, especially now that the Hummingbird is loose. As a general rule, the long tail keyword is the complete opposite of the “head” terms, like shoes. A search for shoes is more common, but a search for “shiny red women’s shoes,” which is a long tail keyword based upon the head term, are more effective, making them more valuable.

Does Hummingbird Know What it is Doing?

It starts to become obvious that Google knows what it is doing when it comes to the long tail keyword. Making them more important than individual keywords in regard to SEO is the best thing that could come out of Hummingbird. After all is said and done, long tail keywords have a higher conversion rate than standard keywords. In fact, on average, they convert 2.5 times more than one or two word keywords, making them far more lucrative. Look at it from a sales funnel and information point of view:

Hummingbird – Information and the Sales Funnel

The potential customer who uses long tail keywords is obviously more informed and therefore much further along in the sales funnel than those who do not use them. If you sell chocolate bars, and someone is looking for a Bavarian chocolate bar with coconut sprinkles, you stand a better chance of selling to this searcher than the one looking only for chocolate (provided you sell Bavarian chocolate bars with coconut sprinkles). Hummingbird’s move to strengthen the role of long tail keywords is extremely helpful in this way.

Hummingbird and Useful Content

The Panda asked us to provide unique content. What makes content unique? A big part of it is originality. Original content that offers a creative and interesting read for traffic and engages the reader to the point that they want to share it was the goal. Now Hummingbird want us to change that thinking just a little bit by broadening our aim to include content that is useful. (The more useful, the better.) The five things that we should take out of the release of Hummingbird are as follows:

• Content
• Long tail keywords
• Useful information
• Increased Entrance Portals
• Continued SEO

Content… Hummingbird Style

How to… These are the two words that will come to dominate webpages everywhere as webmasters will now seek to answer the questions that could be posed by potential traffic and customers seeking answers. It is a brave new game for content writers everywhere as they strive to provide the kind of how-to articles and blog posts that will best serve the search hungry public at large. Originality, engagement, informative content is still king.

Hummingbird Welcomes Long Tail Keywords Back

The re-emergence of the long tail keyword should be a welcome sight for webmasters. The average person never abandoned long tail keywords and now that websites are going to optimize for those, everyone will benefit. Long Tail Keyword Generators will become more popular than ever. Website owners will benefit from the free long-tail keyword generation tools that can be found on the Internet, like WordStream’s Long Tail Keyword Mining software.

The Useful Hummingbird

Useful information is the name of the game. What webmasters must decide is what is useful and what is not. For this reason, websites that answer as many questions over a wide array of topics will do well. What this means is more content. In order to answer as many questions as possible and provide more information, webmasters will call upon writers to produce more content than ever before in the hopes of making their websites as invaluable as ever.

More Places for the Hummingbird to Land

The more entrance portals a website has, the better off it will be. This means, again, more pages, more content, and more links that lead to these pages. Whether it is better to meet a few needs per article or blog post and provide numerous pages, or whether it is better to fill more needs over longer word counts with fewer pages, remains to be seen. Either way, it boils down to content.

Optimizing for the Hummingbird

Google stated that the release of its Hummingbird could potentially go unnoticed. It also stated that SEO would remain unaffected. For the most part, this is true. Everything we were doing to optimize our websites should continue to be our focus with the exception of long tail keyword optimization.

It is a brave new world in internet marketing and Google is leading the charge slowly but surely toward a better way to search for what we need. If you have a website, now is the time to adapt and prepare your websites and blogs for whatever may be coming next. It is anyone’s guess what the future holds. It may well be that we will have a better understanding of where Google is leading us upon the release of Hummingbird’s rolling upgrades. Until then, content and long tail keywords are the order of the day.

About the Author: Asher Elran is a practical software engineer and a marketing specialist, CEO at Dynamic Search, and founder of Web Ethics.