Updated January 13, 2023
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All About Artificial Intelligence Indexing
Google’s Hummingbird is all about Semantic SEO. So what does this mean when working on content marketing? I’ll explain what Semantic SEO is and why the Hummingbird algorithm change rewards businesses that dedicate resources to answering customer-centric questions.
Semantic SEO is Fancy Term for Synonym Match
Semantic SEO (aka Latent Semantic Indexing) means that search engines are better at guessing a search intent. Meaning, they will show related keywords, synonyms and grammatical variations when delivering up a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Remember, a search engine’s job is to serve up the most relevant answer to a question. Humans will continue to use their search service if they get a good experience. Google’s algorithm has 200+ factors in determining ranking on a SERP. So, pay attention to your Analytics and check your bounce rate and pages viewed to determine if you are giving visitors a pleasant experience when they land on a webpage or blog post. Google is a little like Santa. They’re watching if you’re being naughty or nice. And they keep a list.
Quality & In-depth Content
We’re often asked how many words should be on a web page or blog post. The answer: it depends. How many words do you need to answer the question? Creating in-depth content isn’t about long copy that drones on and on. Quality content uses enough words to educate and engage an audience. So there’s really no magical word count. We have found that 125 words isn’t enough to satisfy a reader. And on certain subjects, 500-1000 words is just right.
Red Elixir for Hummingbird
Since the Hummingbird release, there’s a lot of speculation on how this major search overhaul will affect SEO. We’ve witnessed some websites have been rewarded… because they consistently publish quality content that’s focused and relevant to their business. Hummingbird represents a move to artificial intelligence using Semantic SEO principles.
Google hired Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and inventor famous for his technological predictions like singularity (greater-than-human intelligence). He will lead its Engineering Lab. When interviewed earlier this year, Kurzweil described his work at Google as “ambitious.” I wonder how smart search can get… probably just short of mind-reading?
In this post I used 360 words… was it enough to satisfy you?
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