How to Tame the Google Hummingbird

For those of you still wondering what the recent Panda release did to your website, here's another update from the stables - Hummingbird. Thankfully, this creature has not disrupted any rankings (not that we know of). Although it wasn't formally announced by Google, Hummingbird came into effect sometime around the end of August or beginning of September. The main objective of this release is to handle more complex search queries.

The prime focus of Google here is inspired by the tendency of users to put conversational searches. Rather than returning page results which contain those words, it will return exact answers to those queries. Here's what you can do to make the most of this update:

Add Q&A-style Content

Users are looking for answers on the internet, so if you can adapt your site accordingly it will be conducive to attract more traffic. Using a Question-Answer format can help your website garner higher rankings. While it doesn't mean that you need to rewrite the whole content, you can follow a "How to" approach when creating blogs or articles.

Implement Schema Markup

Useful snippets such as star ratings, product price, total savings, recipe preparation time etc tend to highlight some aspect of your data and thus boost your content. Google identifies these highlighters using a schema vocabulary. It's a question of how you implement this for your industry type.  

Mobile Friendly

Another helpful practice is to make your website mobile SEO friendly to accommodate a large percentage of users who access web on their smart phones. Hummingbird also lays special emphasis on catering to the needs of mobile audience. Therefore, creating a mobile version of your website that offers fewer images, simple navigation and faster load time can help you quickly gain points with Google.

These simple strategies will help webmasters reap significant benefits and optimize their online endeavors to be more successful and fruitful in future.  

Koenig Solutions, a renowned IT training firm, offers various courses including SEO, PPC etc. that help professionals further hone their technical skills and always stay ahead in these rapidly changing times.