Panda and Penguin have become household words as companies strive to improve content and stop doing anything that could be construed as “black hat”.
But Hummingbird, introduced earlier this year, has turned up the heat even more by getting even deeper under the skin of your website and exposing any schemes that you might still be using to attract the search engines.
Now is a great time to audit how your webmaster is positioning your business center on the internet.
I came across a good nuts and bolts article from searchengineland.com that gets into detail as to the new dos and don’ts of content handling, especially as they are associated with Hummingbird.
Here are a few key things you and your web team need to know. Urge your webmaster to get on top of this quickly, as not doing so could cause you much grief in 2014.
- 1. Don’t continue to think “keywords” only as you create your content. Think key topics. What is grabbing the attention of potential tenants right now? Don’t just toss a few words in, create an article or blog around it. So, it could be standing desks, or the latest in A/V technology, or a special niche your coworking space is targeting. Remember too, that as technology advances, more of your prospects will be using voice search and natural language word strings to find you. Keywords, alone, are rapidly losing their power.
- 2. Think “synonyms”. Are there synonyms and synonym phrases that can be used on your landing pages and articles?
- 3. Think before you Link. Back linking is more popular than ever, but take the time to discover truly relevant partners before linking.
- 4. Links should always be in context with your topic. This is an old rule but you may be surprised at how many businesses are still using flaming hot phrases to get the click through, only to deliver a completely irrelevant landing page.
- 5. Get rid of any lingering bad links. You can use the Google Links Disavow tool to do so.
- 6. Find good writers. The days of writing simply for SEO are gone; writers who can put together interesting content will help the SEOs, not fluff pieces chocked full of keywords. Those days are over.
Make sure everyone in your business center has a grasp of the new rules, not just your webmaster. That way they will be using their time wisely and looking for high quality opportunities for articles and link partners. As the competition continues to heat up for centers, this could make the difference in getting feet into your doors.
Above all keep in mind that Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird are good for the internet. While they may wreak a bit of havock with webmasters and writers out for a quick fix page rank, ultimately they will help keep content richer and more relevant and search meaningful. That’s good for everyone.
