How Can You Take Advantage of Google’s Hummingbird Update?

How Can You Take Advantage of Google's Hummingbird Update?While we’re waiting for the dust to settle for the latest Penguin update, why don’t we talk about Hummingbird update, and how we can use this new Google algorithm for our advantage.

So, what exactly is Hummingbird update?

This concept was presented to us by Google as a birthday gift– the surprise Google had for us just before they turned 15. It is simply a change in the way Google is showing results, a move from results based on keywords to results that answer asked questions in searches.

How Can You Take Advantage of Google's Hummingbird Update?

How it Works

The hummingbird is natural- as close to human conversation as it can get. In everyday speech, we don’t speak keywords. Do we? Absolutely not. It uses the same concept to give results. It is conversational in that it provides answers to searches keyed in as questions. The questions can be quite long phrases, which is opposed to the normal keywords searches that Google has been using. It basically applies the same concept used in android phones that use voice commands.

The Rationale Behind it

The rationale behind the concept was response to customer’s needs. Google had noted the trend in the way people were making their searches. Instead of keying in keywords, people were now searching using long tail questions. This was influenced to a large extent by the fact that many people now access internet on phone.

How Do you Put Google Hummingbird into Maximal Use?

How Can You Take Advantage of Google's Hummingbird Update?

For your business or brand to benefit from the hummingbird, you will need to know what people are asking about it. This is because Google is moving towards fresh content. When you know what people are looking for, building fresh content around it will be an easy task. It is all about meeting your customer’s needs. Visiting popular forums like answers.com or answers.yahoo.com will help in providing hints on what to write about.

After knowing what to write about, you need to structure your content in a productive way. Begin with a title that is a question with the first word being a wh-word. This is just simple grammar. These words are: how, when, where, what, who, and which. It is essential for the first subtitle to include the keyword too. The other subtitles need to be generic, with at least the fourth being a question which includes the keyword. If the content is long, you can alternate the subtitles which have keywords with generic ones. Of course, write relevant content that builds towards answering the question you posed in your title.

Old content is surely going to send your brand to page 3, where nobody may ever see it, despite having all the relevant keywords. The hummingbird will combine answers to long tail questions with how recent and fresh the content is. Don’t get cunning here. Fresh content meets the customer’s needs. If all you think you can do is re-publish what existed so as to have a recent date, then your customers will lose faith in you. They have already read it. They want something new. After all, that’s what we all want.

About the Author

Wendell Jones is an internet marketing blogger who specializes in content development and content marketing. He’s also part of RankUpMedia team, an Orange County SEO agency. Feel free to head over to RankUpMedia.com for more info about SEO and SEM.