Google Penguin After-Dance Going On Now?

There is some very early chatter at WebmasterWorld of reports that another Google shakeup is going on right now. webmasters are questioning if it is an update to Penguin 2.1 or if it is something else.
Yesterday morning, one SEO wrote:

Can't see any change in our SERP's but something deffo hit us again today sad

This was followed up with several, "me too" types of posts including:

Weirdness. One of my sites got a boost after the Penguin update on the 4th. Another had a big search surge yesterday but a huge decline this morning.


It is hard to say what is going on right now, but if you saw a change in Google traffic yesterday, let us know and based on the comments, I may ask Google for a comment.

None of the tracking tools show a change yet. But there are indeed many individual complaints in the Google forums as well

SEOs Adapt To Google's Hummingbird Algorithm  

As you know, Google announced their Hummingbird algorithm about a month after it launched, claiming no one noticed and no one should notice. But we do think we did notice but no one can confirm that outside of Google and they won't.
That being said, clearly the search results are different since the launch of Hummingbird and SEOs will likely need to adapt.
Some forward thinking SEOs and webmasters are already thinking up what the end game for Google is with Hummingbird and how to adapt their sites to fit that box.
A WebmasterWorld thread has some really interesting conversation around what some believe the key difference is before and after Hummingbird.

Unique Content versus Useful Content

While unique content is more of a Google Panda related thing, useful content although Panda, is maybe more Hummingbird.

Google understands searchers queries differently with Hummingbird than they did before. So how can the search results not change. How can you as a webmaster change your content to make it more useful, while it still being unique, to encourage Google to show your site over your competitors.   

It's no longer just a single page and its title satisfying a query... It becomes a whole site satisfying a range of users. With that kind of scope, the individual referrers are both less easy to specify and less determined by the landing page itself. Actually, not so different from what some of us have been preaching.

Don't optimize for keywords, optimize for a satisfied customer from stage one of the buying cycle to the end. Is it that easy? What if you don't offer all the stages? Well, I assume that is not exactly the point.

Robert believes this will eventually lead to search results that are "less a collection of content farms and more a collection of pages created with the user genuinely in mind." I am not 100% confident.    

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SEO is going dead start using these altarnative tactics

SEO is a constantly changing industry, and much of what you read in a passing introduction to the subject is outdated. We’d like to take this time to discuss several SEO tactics that are dead or dying. We’re not necessarily claiming that these tactics never work (although that’s true for a few of them). We’re simply pointing out that these tactics are losing value and place the future of your site at risk.

Exact Match Domain Names

There was a time when your domain name could give you a boost over your competitors, but this tactic was so abused that Google released an algorithmic update just to target exact match domains.Today, exact match domains only really matter for branded searches. If somebody searches for Amazon, they’re going to get Amazon.com. Google is getting increasingly skilled at telling the difference between a branded search and a phrase search. 

Alternative

Instead of choosing a domain name that matches a commonly searched for phrase, choose a domain name that will stick in people’s heads. Look at all the successful tech companies and you’ll see that very few of them are keyword-driven. Google, Facebook, Kickstarter, Amazon, Zappos: these names are designed to be remembered, not to inform.

It’s also important to realize that the end of exact match domains doesn’t mean the end of keyword research. It simply means that keyword research is far more important for individual pages than it is for domain names.

Exact Match Keywords in Titles and Meta Tags

Keyword-stuffed meta descriptions are as dead as an SEO tactic can be. They offer no value whatsoever, except to encourage a click-through from the SERP. We can’t stress this enough. It’s good practice to get a call-to-action in your meta description, and that’s the only reason you should be using it. Stuffing it with keywords is only going to scare away users.

Exact match keywords in titles are a grayer area. If you can fit an exact keyword into the title, it’s still worth doing it, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about cutting and pasting a keyword out of the AdWords Keyword Tool and giving no thought to your title. This should be avoided almost every time.

It’s not hard for Google to tell if every one of your page titles is simply stripped right out of the keyword tool, and users subconsciously pick up on it as well.

Alternative

Work a variation of the keyword phrase into a title that encourages click-through and social activity. Put the focus on grabbing attention and encouraging clicks, rather than on the keyword.
You should still try to work the keyword phrase, or a subtle variation of it, into the title, but not at the expense of a memorable and eye-grabbing title. Don’t concern yourself with getting the exact phrase into the title. Adjust the tense and conjugation of your words as needed, and please don’t be afraid to add punctuation or adjust the order of the words.
If you pay attention to the search results, you’ll notice that exact match titles don’t show up as often as they used to. Instead, the keywords increasingly show up scattered throughout the title and the body. Google is getting better at interpreting the meaning of your query, and your approach should reflect this change.

Meta Keywords

I hope everybody who’s reading this already knows this, but meta keywords have absolutely no influence on search results whatsoever. This has been true since the end of the ‘90s. It can be good practice to include a few keywords in case your site gets scraped by some tool that still uses the meta keywords, but as far as SEO this one is just plain useless.

Alternative

Focus on increasing your percentage of repeat visitors from the search engines. Google can measure how often users return to your site, and they use this information to determine how relevant your content is. I sometimes think of this as the present-day stand-in for meta keywords, since links are more accurately thought of as authority signals than as relevancy ones (though this isn’t completely true).
Analyze Google Analytics to find the pages on your site with the highest percentage of repeat visitors (the lowest percentage of new visitors). These are the pages that you want to promote and emulate the most. (Make sure that you are filtering yourself out of Google Analytics before taking this data too seriously).

 

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