With the recent release of Google’s Hummingbird update, it’s important to know how you’ll have to tailor your SEO strategy to remain in good standing with the new changes. Now that we’ve had a few months to experience Hummingbird, it has become a bit easier to keep your rankings in place. However, there are still a few things popping up here and there that you may not know about, so we’ve decided to do a recap of sorts to help make sure everyone is up to speed on what exactly the update does.

 

 

 

 

What Do You Need To Worry About?

One of the biggest concerns whenever a major Google update comes out is whether or not it will revolutionize SEO. Fortunately, Hummingbird keeps all the fundamentals in place, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting everything you know about optimization or anything ridiculous like that. Effective content is still the best thing you can do for a website, keywords still work the same, and everything’s sunshine and rainbows. Well, for the most part anyway. There are still some major aspects of the update you should be aware of, even though nothing should worry you.

 

First and foremost, searches are now much more intelligent. There is a significantly larger emphasis on actual sentences showing correct results as opposed to splices of keywords. This means less need for long-tail keywords that sound like a robot wrote them and a bigger focus on competing for niche keywords instead. Along with smarter searches comes longer times spent on results pages. While it’s a bit too early to be able to definitively say this leads to more effective sponsored ads, it is certainly looking that way. Even though we all know we should be utilizing sponsored ads, it could be a smarter tactic now than in the past, and any websites not currently running them may quickly decide to start.

 

Luckily, there isn’t too much that actually effects what SEO specialists need to do. All in all, it’s a pretty light update in terms of what you’ll have to start doing different. Just remember that long-tailed keywords are going to change pretty drastically, so be prepared for that. Pay extra attention to how they rank in the next few months and adjust accordingly, as well as seeing how your sponsored ads to. Feel free to explore with them, too, but don’t get adventurous before we have a definitive answer on how much the ads and keywords will be impacted. Anything beyond those two aspects is business as usual. Hummingbird should be easy to adjust to, so there isn’t much you’ll have to sweat about.