On his 15th birthday, Google officially announced that they have already rolled out the Google Hummingbird Update. The update was specifically geared to deal with more complex search queries.
With this algorithm enhancement, Google set more importance on conversational search and semantic processing of queries. Instead of processing a simply by related the use of words on web pages stored in the index, Google now is aware of the real context of the query and returns exact answers. Consequently, there are some changes that you must apply on your website in order to make the most of this update.
1. Increase the Domain Authority of Your Website:
Google wants to present the most authoritative content to its users and one of the best ways for it to recognize genuine sites is by evaluating the high quality of content and the links pointing to them. So having links from high quality resources always helps to increase your website’s online search engine presence. Links held a similar importance in the past and will continue to be important in the future. Here I want to point out that Google has improved focus on keeping track of organic backlinks versus artificial but appropriate backlinks. Following a properly organized link baiting strategy to obtain organic links is much butter obtaining link using the old methods of cheap content marketing. Earning links (editorial link) by providing your customers well and increasing your brand value is the way to follow for the long run.
2. Use Google Authorship:
It is a priority task to implement Google Authorship on your site. The big brands always remain an exception but for the rest of us, the best way to let Google identify you and move from the unknown web to the named web is by using Google authorship. Here I also want to point out that it also helps to improve the click-through-rate (CTR) as people usually click more often on search results displaying an author image as opposed to unknown search results.
3. Optimize Website for Mobile Devices:
Today the uses of mobile devices are increasing day by day and having a mobile friendly site is your best bet to accommodate these users. Hummingbird has specially tailored itself to provide the needs of mobile users. The better way is to create a mobile friendly website with a faster loading time, fewer images and simple navigation. The most important point is that your site should be easily crawlable and quickly loadable coz users hat sites that are slow.
4. Use Schema Mark Up:
Schema mark up is a revolutionary vocabulary that can be applied on any site using variant languages like microformat, microdata and RDF etc. Rich snippets like rating and reviews, recipe preparation time, data highlighter and product pricing etc all are the form of schema mark up.
The best way to enable Google to clearly understand the content displayed on your website is with the help of schema vocabulary. Many website owners are unacquainted with this, but the point is, you can apply schema mark up on almost every kind of content irrespective of your industry. This is a change to improve the semantic value of your website and make it stand out in the search results.
5. Add Question Answer Pattern in Content:
People are looking for answers (solutions) and, if your website can be tailored towards a question answer pattern kind of content, then that would perform best after the Google Hummingbird update. It is not strange to see QA websites rising up the rankings.
That does not mean you to start rewriting all your existing content and add a QA pattern to it, but focusing on creating that contain a “How to” approach and that present definite solutions to user queries will help. Please keep in mind that not all websites can match this pattern and an interesting point here is that not all queries demand a QA like pattern being return back by Google.
A study of search patterns indicates that implementing the 5 strategies noted above is the best approach in regards to the Google’s Hummingbird update which has impacted around 90% of all search queries.
