Common Google Hummingbird Mistakes, And How To Fix Them: Interview With Marcus Tober At #SMX West

As part of our SEJ interview series, Marcus Tober of Searchmetrics joins us to discuss Google Hummingbird.

Specifically, Marcus points out common mistakes he has been seeing website owners and SEOs make since Google rolled out their Hummingbird algorithm, and how to fix these mistakes.

Hear his advice in the video below:

Here are some key takeaways from the video:

• One of the most common mistakes Marcus sees is people misunderstanding Hummingbird altogether. People believe it’s just a minor change, when really Google is taking a completely different approach to how they understand queries.
• In the past, two queries with the same meaning that were typed out differently would product different results. Searchmetrics conducted a study showing the number of unique URLs in search results have gone down 6.5% since Hummingbird launched.
• Google search has become less about producing a variety of results and more about producing the best results, which means that there is a lot more competition when it comes to producing content. If your content is too similar to what’s already out there, and doesn’t add any additional value,  it may not get shown.
• When it comes to producing content, people should think about how they can answer searchers’ questions in a way that completely fulfills their needs. Marcus says if your content is holistic it will get found for many terms.
• Today creating content is about thinking of the typical questions a user has, and answer these questions with as much supporting information as you can provide to back up your answer.
• Producing rich content means your website will naturally be filled with the keywords you want to rank for.
• Marcus says the best optimized site in the world is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is always fresh, has great internal linking structure, and contains holistic content that provides complete answers to users’ questions.
• Marcus says Wikipedia is a great site to learn from when it comes to producing content that pleases Google Hummingbird.

Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews.