How to Recover from Google Hummingbird Penalty

Google has changed the face of SEO  a lot since last year. After Google Panda and Penguin Algorithm, Google announced hummingbird Algorithm to provide users exactly what they are looking for by bringing conversational based search instead of just keywords based search. If you are a regular reader of this blog then, you might have gone through this article Link Building Strategies: After Google Panda and Penguin Update. In which we have already discussed Google‘s Panda and Penguin Algorithm, but here we will study Google hummingbird Algorithm.

Google Panda And Penguin Algorithm Summary

Google’s Panda Algorithm was rolled to fight with duplicate content. It was a nightmare to web spammers as it ranked down all the copied content or spun content. Blogs with high bounce rate or 404 errors and poor grammar were mainly penalized. Fresh and quality content with good word count was rewarded, then Came Google’s Penguin Algorithm.

Google‘s Penguin Algorithm was rolled not just to fight with duplicate content, but also with various Black-hat SEO and Link Building techniques such as: Cloaking, Keyword stuffing, comment spam links, etc. All the blogs with paid links and other comment spam links were penalized by devaluing the links.

What is Google hummingbird Algorithm?

Google‘s hummingbird Algorithm was rolled to emphasis more on conversation based search (Natural Language Queries) instead of just keyword based search. This clearly means that now posts stuffed with keywords will no longer rank higher instead posts with unique content will rank higher. It will provide you results based upon your previous search. Hummingbird lead to acceptance of  conversational query in Knowledge graph. Here are some examples from a post at Wordtracker Blog.

After that use following search query.

You can clearly see that Google recognized by “He” that you are referring to Tom Brady by your previous search “Show me pictures of Tom Brady” and this result is drawn from Knowledge Graph. Instead of finding best match for your keyword, Hummingbird finds the best answer to the question. Apart from voice searches on mobile, Hummingbird also has comparison tool. It can compare two or more objects. Here is an example given by Amit Singhal from Google.

How to recover from Google Hummingbird Algorithm

• Start optimizing for conversational search: People changed the way they used to search for e.g., Earlier they used to search “pizza in town” but now they search as “Where can I get best pizza near me”. Since I already mentioned above that Hummingbird finds the best answer to your question. Focus on writing tutorials or how-to guide to get organic traffic from Google.
• Optimize your website for mobile: Make a mobile view of your website so that it is easily readable from mobile phones. Mobile searches volumes are increasing rapidly and soon it will be more than desktop search.
• Use Google Plus: Use Google plus , The social network by Google. You must activate authorship in order to get your brand identified by Google and having author rank.
• Use related keywords: Use synonym to the keywords of your post so that Google bots can understand that what info page has.
• Work on Author Rank: Author Rank varies on number of factors like number of google plus shares,activity etc, It helps in bringing credibility to your posts. After activating authorship, Write killer articles and stay active on Google Plus. You can check Author Rank here.
• Optimize your website for voice search: Google Now is an ultimate part of this mind reading algorithm. It can perform search queries using speech. Queries using speech will also be conversational queries like: “What year did Titanic movie released?”. Make sure that you optimize your website according to conversational search.

I am quite sure that if you follow above mentioned strategies, then you will see great rise in your rankings and thus traffic. So what is your strategy? Do share with us.