Whether you are starting a business or have been established for decades we all get that sinking feeling when our website suddenly stops ranking for keywords our business prides themselves on. With everything being digital and print advertising slowly becoming a dying form of marketing, the internet is now something in which all businesses wish to conquer.
Google is no fool. The algorithm and knowledge which Google uses is far superior to that of a web developer and is fast becoming a giant game of chess. Google will make the first move, a developer will make their move and then Google will flip the chess board and start again… you get the idea.
If you are not ranking for keywords you once did then you may be using old SEO trends such as the Panda, Smoothieking, IceMan5, OldPossum or even the Porky Pig update. While all of these updates sound humorous and something to not take seriously, you would be making a fatal mistake by ignoring these changes in trending SEO.
Welcome the dawn of Google Hummingbird
Although Hummingbird has been in place since 2013 the SEO algorithm still remains similar to this even today.
What is Hummingbird?
“Unlike the previous Panda and Penguin updates which were initially released as add-ons to Google’s existing algorithm, Hummingbird has been cited as a complete overhaul of the core algorithm. While it’s believed that many preexisting components of the core algorithm remained intact, Hummingbird signaled Google’s commitment to an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the intent of searchers’ queries with the goal of matching them to more relevant results.”
So, what is the future of SEO?
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP is a website built with the consumer in mind. When you are developing your website you need to think about the size of your webpage in HTML format. Is your HTML lighter and easier to load? AMP pages load approximately 40 times faster than non-AMP pages and making a few changes to your website can not only change the whole experience for your users but also increase your Search Engine ranking position.
Responsive web designs (mobile friendly)
In this era of website development, if your website isn’t mobile friendly then you are losing 52.2% of potential visitors. “In 2018, 52.2 percent of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones” (source)
In March 2018 Google announced that they are migrating all websites to a mobile friendly index. This will mean that the mobile friendly version is used for ranking and indexing your web pages, the statement is as follows:
“Today we’re announcing that after a year and a half of careful experimentation and testing, we’ve started migrating sites that follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing.”
This is then followed by:
“To recap, our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page’s content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different from the mobile version. Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they’re looking for.” (Source)
This makes mobile responsive websites extremely important for ranking!
Voice Search (SEO) in 2019
In the Hummingbird update, we have seen the end of stuffing keywords into articles and the introduction of voice technology. When implementing voice into your website you need understand the NLP or Natural Language Processing system. I won’t make you read the whole document but the main factors are laid out in this diagram below.
The 5 most important elements of a great website
Easy to Read Posts
If you are an “SEO Guru” from 2011 you will probably remember the days in which you could write long sentences and smash about 15 keywords into it. Sadly, this meta doesn’t exist anymore. When structuring your posts you need to focus on easy to read and top quality content. Paragraphs need to be kept to 4 or 5 sentences and should all support the same one focal point e.g. “Greggs vegan sausage roll”
This rule of thumb is mostly for those visiting on a mobile or tablet device where scrolling massive paragraphs simply isn’t feasible.
So there we have it, your new SEO top tips. We wish you every success with your websites and hope to see you ranking at the top of your industry SERP.