Google’s Hummingbird Update: What It Means for Content Marketing

Whenever there’s a Google algorithm update, it seems that half of the Internet bursts into flames, but alas! The Hummingbird update managed to be implemented quickly and without much issue. So what does it mean for your content marketing?

Essentially, Hummingbird is more about how Google sorts information for complex queries (after all, 20% of searches on Google each day are still unique). Hummingbird equips the engine with more concrete ways to interpret how the words and phrases work together to form meaning. So for example, instead of looking at individual keywords in a phrase and serving up results that include those words, Hummingbird has the ability to take words into different context based on the phrasing. It’s a pretty big deal, guys. It means better search results for everyone (I think I just heard a collective sigh of relief).

For content marketers and those that believe in the power of SEO, this is actually not threatening or life-changing at all. Google is aiming to create a more personalized web for everyone, which in turn, prohibits a lot of old hat ways of gaming the system (e.g. keyword stuffing, link farming). Instead, you can focus on writing great content and Google can focus on serving more exact results for people typing in long or complex queries. 

Let me also take this opportunity to assure you that if you are a small-to-medium business, you should be using more long-tail keyword phrases for your content anyway. The volume might be lower for a phrase like “how to save money by converting to green energy solutions in my home,” but it is certain to be a more interested/invested user than one who types in “what’s green energy?” The best way to evaluate your content’s titles, categories or tags is to make sure that they are all relevant to both that page’s content and relevant to the user. As always, you have to keep the user in mind above SEO or Google or what have you.

Hummingbird is bound to produce better search results for everyone, and allows content marketers the opportunity to be found for more long-tail and variant keyword phrases. 

Interested in how we can help you with content marketing? Contact the matchstick social team today: info@matchsticksocial.com.