SEO

Secure Search & Google Hummingbird: Is Your SEO Team Ready?

October 03, 2013

3 Minute Read

With Google’s recent announcement about Hummingbird, in a recent post, we gave you a short history lesson on the changes in Google’s algorithms over the years and how it affects your SEO efforts.

Long story short: If you haven’t already been building a comprehensive content strategy, you should be!

Google began switching over to secure search in October of 2011. With the release of Hummingbird, the universal default for Google is now 100% secure search. So even if you are not signed in to your Google account, your search will be encrypted and no keyword data will be used.

Say Goodbye to Keyword Data

There certainly have been plenty of articles published about the end of SEO as we know it. This may be true for Google, but keyword data is still used with Bing and other search engines. At this point, you may be getting overwhelmed with what you need to know to optimize your site. Don’t Panic!

So how do you stay on top of Google search and how do you avoid the dreaded “Keyword not provided”? The answer is Content Centric SEO. We think BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu did a pretty good job explaining this transition in this video.

It’s time to start analyzing your website and taking a look at your total content performance conversion metrics, geographies, local search and even across devices. In order to know where you are going and what you need, it is essential to look at the total picture.

Beef Up Your Content

At Be Found Online we see this move to page-centric SEO as a fantastic opportunity for businesses and marketers. Building a comprehensive content strategy has always been a good approach and the cornerstone of every SEO effort. Only now it is centered on what you offer and relevancy to the customer. Keywords are still important but you can’t just throw a bunch of words up on a webpage and expect to rank. You need to create content around the products and services you offer and create interactions on social media for the best results.

By using tools like BrightEdge, BFO is able to help companies focus their efforts on a content–based approach to organic search. We look at how your content performs across different devices, estimate search traffic based on historical and projected trends, create and optimize content for your site for the best conversion and assess your site for best practices. With a total picture of content performance, we have been proactive in helping our clients stay ahead of the curve by creating rich content for their blogs, landing pages and social media campaigns.

Find out how we can help develop a page-centric SEO strategy and improve reporting on your current content marketing performance by check out our ebook ‘The Marketer’s Guide to Managing and Maximizing SEO Success‘.

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The BFO Team

Here at BFO, we're always striving to bring you the latest and greatest in digital marketing insights and education. We're not ones to brag, but we've been lucky enough to be featured in all sorts of fancy publications and media outlets, strutting our stuff and showing off our industry expertise.