2. Going Where No Search Has Gone
Before
“If you think of Google as if it were a car, then penguin and panda
updates were like adding more horsepower to an older but solid
car engine. Hummingbird is basically like taking the entire engine
out of the car out and replacing it with a brand new one...”
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3. In The Past
SEO in the past was always about probabilities.
‣ Search returned
“statistically” probable
answers to the query.
•
To succeed in search, we had a
variety of tools: inbound links,
meta data, anchor text and
other on-page techniques.
•
When something didn’t work
we simply had to increase the
quality, volume and/or
intensity.
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5. In The Present
In the new semantic web, statistics are fading away.
‣ Search is changing, actually
it’s becoming:
•
Personalized, populated with
familiar faces, more accurate
and more intuitive.
‣ The way we search and what
we use is changing:
•
Mobile, voice, local , personal,
conversational, predictive,
functional (i.e. maps, video)
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6. Google’s New Hummingbird Algorithm
Introducing “Entities”... a radical new approach to search.
‣ Entities Are The New
Driver
•
Entities are generated
relational mapping that
uncovers the association
between different data
points.
•
Entities become trusted
points around which other
data revolves.
Source: Wikipedia
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7. What Is An Entity?
If you think about a knowledge graph in search, the entity isn’t
the “thing” - but it’s everything around it that defines whatever it
is. When you think of a house, you think of everything that
represents a home whether it’s inside or outside the home...
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8. How Are Entities Produced?
Understanding how entities are produced will be critical for
every SEO professional to understand going forward.
‣ Imported from trusted
sources (ex. Wikipedia)
‣ Extracted from web
pages
‣ Data mining in the
social web
‣ Sentiment mining
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9. The Challenge
Entities are a real challenge to search engine optimization.
‣ They provide answers
at the search box
rather than the
suggestions.
•
Optimization appears to
be reduced to answering
a search query... but
LOOK AGAIN!
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10. The Challenge (continued...)
The “ENTITY” that is the answer to the search query “who is
Bob Marley” produced:
‣ An answer
‣ A biography w/
associated links
‣ Recent posts w/ links
‣ Associated entities,
complete w/ links
A “single answer” result generated a
much wider and more related field of
data than was ever possible before.
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11. Entities: Challenge & Opportunity
For SEOs the challenges are as steep as the question is simple:
‣ Changing search interface (screen-less computers
and keyless devices)
‣ Less reliance on keywords
‣ Depreciation of existing, on-page SEO techniques
‣ Loss of real estate space of SERPs
‣ Reduced reliance on statistical association in
results
How do we take advantage of “Entities” to make up for it all?
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12. Reverse Engineering
Let’s take a look at at the key data points...
‣ Authority
THINK:
‣ Trust
Volume
‣ Reputation
Connection
Velocity
‣ Influence
Social discovery
Variety
Social buzz
If that’s the end result, how can it be reduced
further into manageable steps?
What actions can be taken at contentcreation that will produce these outcomes, and
how can this be ensured?
Tenacity
+ Authorship & “Author Rank”
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13. Focus On People, Not Keywords
Take advantage of social signals and user groups to
help get your message, product or service in front of
those who would benefit most from it. After all, the
web was created for the “person”, not the keyword.
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14. What You Haven’t Heard...
The remaining material is available via this post only. Please use
this material to dominate your competition.
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15. Hummingbird Update (Insider Info)
Rather than attempting to identify the individual
keywords or phrases that are found in a search
query, the new Hummingbird update looks at the
query as a whole. It considers the whole sentence
and then looks for the most relevant results. More
than this, though, it provides a more rounded list of
results that give background information as well as
supporting information too.
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16. Going Deeper
What can you do to take advantage of this update?
Long-Tail Keywords
Authority
Hummingbird concentrates on query strings
rather than individual words and this means
that it will have obvious implications on
pages that utilize and include long-tail
keywords.
Google considers the authority of a page, and
even the authority of a page author, to be
extremely important.
Long-tail keywords have always been
considered beneficial because they typically
have a high conversion rate from highly
targeted visitors. However, it has proven
difficult to benefit from much traffic as a
result of their being found on a page.
Long-tail keywords, which are normally
added to pages during the natural process of
writing high quality content, may generate
more traffic for a website in the future.
Now, authority will become even more
relevant and pertinent.
Hummingbird will help ensure that Google
delivers users to the most appropriate page
of a website, rather than to a home page or
top level page. As such, every single page
should be closely targeted to potential
visitors. Not only will this help improve
conversion rates as part of a conversion rate
optimization campaign but it may also help
to drive traffic to the pages of a website via
Google results too.
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17. Going Deeper
The landscape is changing...
Mobile Search
Voice Search
Analysts believe that these changes are
heavily influenced by Google's desire to
become more mobile. As well as their mobile
search engine pages, Google also owns
Android which even has its own voice search
capabilities.
Voice search naturally tends to mean more
conversational and more natural language.
Hummingbird will have a direct impact on
those who employ mobile friendly landing
pages or sites.
Rather than searching for a one or two word
phrase, people will be more inclined to use
whole sentences, questions, and more
complex queries when they speak.
Hummingbird will determine the most
relevant and highest quality pages that meet
the needs of the searcher.
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18. SEO is not DEAD
Hummingbird is not killing SEO, nor is SEO dead.
‣ The Future of SEO
•
Concentrate your efforts on a wellrounded content marketing plan.
•
Find ways in which to cover the
different aspects of the topic their
site is related to.
•
Continue to add high quality
content to your site + integrate your
content efforts into a Social Media
platform of some sort, preferably
Google+!
•
Site owners that rely on the creation
and distribution of high-quality content
and that steer clear of black-hat
techniques, and that look to build
multiple traffic streams using a
universal marketing approach are those
that will enjoy better long term results.
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19. SEO, Going Forward
How will you take advantage of “Voice” based search?
‣ Google, “Where is the
nearest...”
•
Think about your
content, location and
tone. Does your website
answer the key
questions that a searcher
would ask?
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