As promised, we have pulled together a list of articles on the recent Google updates and algorithm changes to share with our friends in the senior care industry. Warning! If you aren’t a techy, you may need a chocolate martini or a glass of hard cider to get through this… Here are a few excerpts and links to articles that we think explain things best.
1. Why SEO is Now More Like Internal Medicine Than Plastic Surgery
Successful search engine optimization is now much more holistic, and involves things that the site owner doesn’t have as much control over such as gaining inbound links and getting your content shared through social media.
Fishkin explains: “there is so much of the SEO field today that is user experience, usability, web page speed, beautiful design, building content that people actually want to consume and want to share, audience targeting — it’s become much more broad marketing. Everything that touches the website’s experience is today part of SEO.”
2. Writing for Trochilidae: What Google’s Hummingbird Means for Content
“…For those uninterested in tech-heavy jargon and search engine tactics, Hummingbird is simply an innovative way of dissecting semantic information from search queries.
When you type “Where can I buy shoes in Charlotte?” into Google, you’ll find local listings and a few major websites. Hitherto, Google would focus on “shoes” for a subject and “Charlotte” as the filter. Coupled in with the search engine’s existing Knowledge Graph, Hummingbird attempts to answer complicated requests by looking at entire sentences with advanced parameters.
It all comes down to phrasing and meaning rather than keywords. This stretch into human linguistics reflects the needs of smartphone users.”
3. Keep Your Website Content Ranking After Google Hummingbird: 8 Tips
To mark its 15th anniversary at the end of September, Google announced that it had revamped its search algorithm. The new algorithm, called Hummingbird, has been created with mobile and voice search in mind, and nine out of 10 searches will be affected.
For website content, the difference between what people are looking for and why they are looking for it is the heart of the Hummingbird issue.
Why do customers visit your website? Most likely it’s because they have a problem they are trying to solve — there’s a purpose driving their needs, and they are looking to your website content to address that purpose.”
4. Google Hummingbird: When Evolutionary Becomes Revolutionary
“Hummingbird and Google’s question answering system are not revolutionary in and of themselves. The components that comprise them are all evolutionary in nature and function in a synergistic, interoperable manner. Google is taking Question Answering technology (from the past) along with “big data” technology and simply making them work at scale — with phenomenal results. The overall picture is, in fact, revolutionary in nature.
Google Now allows the user to input queries as full questions and provides (or wants to provide) the best possible answers (even before you ask them, leveraging predictive technology). You can obtain the same functionality in Chrome on a laptop or desktop. How does Google achieve its outstanding Question Answering capability? They use a technique which I believe Google refers to as form-based queries combined with natural language techniques as an “overlay.”
You may be asking yourself, “What exactly is a form-based query?” I have illustrated some basic examples below. In general, these are relatively easy to answer, as they tend to be simple look-up type queries in a database (the Knowledge Graph, in this case) and do not require much reasoning or computationally expensive joins.”
5. FAQ: All About The New Google “Hummingbird” Algorithm
“Conversational search” is one of the biggest examples Google gave. People, when speaking searches, may find it more useful to have a conversation.
“What’s the closest place to buy the iPhone 5s to my home?” A traditional search engine might focus on finding matches for words — finding a page that says “buy” and “iPhone 5s,” for example.
Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words. It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might understand that “place” means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that “iPhone 5s” is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.
In particular, Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.” 
If you need help developing a strategy for your senior care content or with writing fresh, unique and industry relevant content, drop us a line. We’d love to help!