If you have a business that depends on web traffic and high visibility, any Google algorithm update will cause you major headaches. If you have been experiencing a steady decline in network traffic, unresponsive SERP ranking despite changing your website, motionless SERP activity despite link building or in the worst case scenario, a notification from Google informing you about punitive measures, it might be because of the Hummingbird.
What is The Hummingbird Penalty
Hummingbird is the renewed search platform in use by Google since September 2013. This platform pays more attention to every word in the search term and their overall meaning, as opposed their individual meaning. The purpose is that pages having contents equating the overall meaning perform better than pages who only match a few words. Unlike the Penguin and Panda updates, the Hummingbird effect is applicable for 90% of pages, which makes for incredible numerical numbers. Although this isn’t a punitive measure per se, still many businesses are going to face a lot of changes they need to adapt to.
How Does Hummingbird Changes Things
Google Hummingbird completely reshuffles the way the search engine perceives search terms. Google is now able to understand the intent of a query better, provide a broader list of documents that can answer that search, and simplify information delivery because it can amalgamate different results having similar meanings into one SERP. User search experience will be better because Google can now understand conversational search queries.
The Hummingbird Recovery Process
The most important thing for business owners hit by the Hummingbird is to get their business back up as soon as possible. If you’re one of them, this Recovery guide will be especially beneficial for you.
1. Avoid Arguments
It’s natural to feel hard done by these changes if they affected your business. However, you should air your grievances for the simple reason that it might just worsen things. of course, accepting losses is never easy but always remember, you’re not entitled to get an apology or even an explanation. So why complicate things further?
2. Review, Review and Review More
examine your site and SEO strategies in a new light now. If you’ve outsourced it to an SEO agency, ask them to do it on behalf of you. You have to take a good look at the fundamentals your pages are built around. Who were your targets during optimization? Are you implementing White Hat SEO policies like avoiding thin contents, avoiding canonicalization problems, using simplified information architecture, and creating shareable authoritative content? What are your link-building intentions?
Be honest in your assessment and start identifying areas you can improve.
3. Clean Bad Content
If you website contains any parts where too much has been done, or illegal strategies have been used, reversing the effects and removing any signs of it should be your priority. If any particular SEO action has jeopardized the quality or direction of the site, that should be discarded immediately. It can be bad backlinks, overstuffing keywords, or thin content.
4. Rebuild Better, Wiser
After you’ve cleansed your website of all that’s bad, you have to start from square one once again. Resist the urge to do what you did earlier because doing that will harm you again. Rebuild a better site, and go for long term benefits steadily.
5. Reach Out To Webmasters
Once you’re done with the purification of your site, consider asking Google for advice. However, make sure you have taken care of all issues beforehand to avoid another hit in the future.
Conclusion:
The Hummingbird Recovery is less of punishment and more of a reminder from Google to do your SEO in the right way. Get to work right now and fix your website. Make sure to never get in this mess again.
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