What Google’s Hummingbird update means to you.

It is almost 3 weeks since the Google’s Hummingbird landed bringing with it sweeping changes that can be noticed only when deeply go into it. As a blogger, I make it a point to read several authority blogs on search engine changes. Thus far, whatever I read about Humming bird algorithm update did not make me any changes in my blogging style because I always wrote in conversational style and never really wove a blog post with one keyword in mind.

After reading various blog posts on the effect of Hummingbird update, this is what I understood.

·         Webmasters will no longer be able to see which keywords brought them traffic from Google searches except for paid clicks via Google AdWords

·         Google conducts a semantic search and give out results based on its knowledge about you the searcher based on your previous search pattern, your social sharing trends and even your location.

·         Your blog post should be clearly written with a conversational style meaning you ask questions such as what, where, when, who , why and how and provide answers to them. (Read below the sample 5 questions)

·         As far as SEO is concerned, you are still required to build links so that your linking sites actually drive traffic. It implies that we have to build links not get to the link juice but to get traffic.

These are the five sample questions:            

What is the Google Hummingbird algorithm?

Why is the Google Hummingbird algorithm important?

How does Hummingbird prepare for new search trends?

How does the Hummingbird algorithm affect SEO?

What should SEOs and Webmasters do going forward to best take advantage of the Google Hummingbird algorithm?

What are a few new post-Hummingbird SEO best practices?

Full credit to Steam Feed for providing great insight into Hummingbird algo update.

How bloggers should react to Google Freshness?

By now, the entire blogosphere must be fully aware of the 'Freshness' algorithm that the mighty Google (I always call it mighty) has started implementing in its search results indexing. It is barely 10 days old I believe.

How bloggers are affected by Google Freshness?
After reading the Google Blog several times, I understood this much:
* Blogs that are not updated at least thrice a week are likely to lose out organic traffic

As Google right said, different searches command different freshness needs. To explain this further, Google aptly pointed to the search term 'fast tomato sauce recipe'. Even if the recipe was posted a few years ago, it might be still be useful as it is very unlikely that another recipe for the same would contain new ingredients or a different method of preparation.

Bloggers who rely on search engine traffic more than other avenues, should stay updated on their topics of interest and post it in their blogs within a few hours preferably.

Overall, I firmly believe blogs command more chances of appearing in search engine results than other forms of websites.

Here is the proof:

I searched this search phrase: "how to manifest "
Look at the screenshot of this term in Google keyword tool that shows 1.83 million searches per month.



Now look at the Google search results below. It is the first page of the search results. Most of them are blogs.

I am surprised to find even my blog post wrote two years ago, sits at the bottom of the first page.