I meet with business owners like you regularly, and everyone wants to know about the latest website design trends or Facebook algorithm or SEO hacks.

But there’s something way more important than any of this — and that’s getting the basics right.

I recently met with a restaurant owner who didn’t understand why his lunchtime trade was so slow. I looked him up online and, according to both his website and Google listing, the restaurant was closed for lunch. Luckily, this is an easy fix but it left me wondering how something this basic had gone below their radar.

Keeping your information up-to-date is vital. This is especially true for opening hours and contact details — how will people get in touch otherwise? How will customers know you’re open? Especially when so many people are using their mobile phone to get directions and make calls to businesses – information needs to be to hand, and accurate.

Here are five more marketing basics to prioritise right now:

1. Mobile-Friendly Website

How does your website look when you browse it on your mobile? With 71% of Australian smartphone users browsing the Internet on their phones daily, this is so important.

Not compatible with mobile? Website visitors are unlikely to stick around — which means you’re losing potential customers.

2. Basic SEO

Search Engine Optimisation sometimes seems like another buzzword, but it is important.

The good news is, the basics are straightforward to implement. Make sure your website is set up correctly and contains engaging and unique content. High-quality content that recognises and helps solve the problems of your target market is key.

If you can find time to blog (like I’m doing now), that’s a bonus!

3. Google My Business

Google My Business is a service offered by Google to help you engage potential customers.

The best part is it’s free (at the moment), so make sure you claim and make the most out of your listing — start by adding your correct opening hours!

4. Know Your Customers

Any good marketing strategy starts with an understanding of the target customers. This will impact everything else you do, so it’s worth spending some time getting it right.

Write it down, print it out and stick it on your wall. Make sure everything you do is focused on them – don’t get distracted.

5. Start an Email List

An email list is one of the most valuable marketing assets any business can have.

Use it to stay in touch with your customers, focusing on providing value over the hard sell. Remember — people don’t like to be sold to, so you need to think about the kind of content and messages your target market want to read.

Are you struggling to find time to do it all yourself? Get in touch to find out how we can help.

Google initially launched voice search in 2012, but it’s really taken off in the past couple of years, especially with the release of personal assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Echo, and Google Home. In fact, ComScore suggests that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches. (This sounds a little high to me.)

For local businesses, voice search has grown exponentially. Google has reported a 900% increase in “near me / today” searches in the past two years – and they also found that searchers are three times more likely to use voice than text searches to find local businesses and ask for local directions.

Why the increase? For one, it’s easier and faster to ask for help out loud rather than typing a search term or request, especially when you’re on the go with mobile devices. You can ask your smartphone a question or get help no matter where you are.

So how does the rise in voice search affect marketing?

In short, if you’re offering products or services for sale directly to consumers (B2C), you need to consider how potential customers will use voice search to find you. While ALL businesses need to think about voice search, it’s critical for local retailers in particular because Google tracks users’ locations and offers results near them when they’re looking for lunch, a haircut, coffee, etc.

Tips on optimising for voice search 

With all that in mind, here are four tips for optimising your website content for voice search:

1. Answer questions in your keyword phrases – Unlike text searches, when people type in a few words like ‘buy garden gloves,’ voice searchers tend to use complete, long-tail phrases and questions such as, “Where can I buy gardening gloves near me?” or “How much do gardening gloves cost?” Therefore, when deciding which keywords or phrases you want to include, think about what questions your potential customers have and how you can answer questions and solve problems within this context.
2. Location, location, location – If you’re a local business, think about what major landmarks you’re near and which neighbourhood or district you’re in. These may be useful in helping people find you. Got a salon right near the University of Adelaide campus? Own a café near Victoria Square or in Parkside? Consider adding these terms to your meta descriptions or on your home page, contact page or FAQ page in order to help Google and local searchers find you.
3. Check your Analytics and Ads results – Another good tip is to check your Google Analytics and Google Ads results. See which keywords or phrases searchers are using to find you. Unfortunately, Google Analytics won’t show you all the keywords used by searchers, but you can still get an idea of what’s bringing people to your site. Look at the search terms for help in crafting your content.
4. Claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing – If you haven’t already set up a Google My Business listing, now is the time. In voice searches for local businesses, Google shows GMB listings first in response to enquiries. In fact, searchers may never get to your website at all, but if they see your phone number, hours, and address on a Google map (as well as some positive Google reviews), they’re much more likely to call or stop by.
   

Need help optimising your website or improving your content? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

In addition to building an easy-to-find and easy-to-use website, one great way to make sure Google knows about your company is to get a free listing on Google My Business.  It’s a no-brainer method to get in front of your customers – and you don’t even need to earn your way there with SEO or buy your way with Google Ads – you just need to own a business that has some face-to-face interaction with customers (eg. you can’t operate 100% online).  No online strategy is complete without Google My Business (GMB) and there are new features you need to know about.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a free tool you can use to help manage your business’ online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. In short, it’s Google’s local business listing management system.  If you don’t have a free listing for your business yet, you can get started at google.com/business. You can also download Google’s free mobile app, which allows you to update your listing from any mobile device.

Once you create a listing, you’ll need to verify it to prove that your business really exists in the location you say it does. You have a few options – including email, phone or using your Google Search Console listing – but most companies choose to verify by mail.

Why is Google My Business so important?

If you’ve created a GMB listing and people search for your business name, Google will provide that information immediately on the first page, as you can see from my example below:

Aside from the benefits this can bring (people can call you, get directions, see your opening hours, etc.) it also means they can leave your business a review, which is great for your digital footprint (more on this here).  Also, if you don’t fill out all your business information, someone else could, because anyone can suggest an edit to your business listing . . . including unhappy customers or your competitors. So make sure you take the time to complete all the information you can.

What’s new: Posts, Booking Buttons & More

Just as Google regularly updates their algorithm to improve the search experience for users, they also make regular changes and improvements to business listings. Some of the most recent changes they’ve made to GMB have to do with their desire to optimise search results and answer as many questions as possible within those results.  Here are some of the new features to consider:

1. Posts – posts are a new feature that you can use to write text, add an image or video clip and a call-to-action to your GMB listing. These can be used for events, sales, promotions, products, blog posts, or any type of announcement. Posts ‘go dark’ after seven days but give you a chance to change things up regularly so your customers have the latest information about what’s going on at your business (and old posts are still there, they just get moved down).
2. Photos and videos – you can now add more photos and even video to your GMB listing. Google reports that businesses with photos receive 42% more requests for driving directions and 35% more click-throughs to their websites. Create high-quality, engaging images to help draw customers in and refresh them regularly. Name, tag and describe your images and videos as well as geotag them to help with your SEO.
3. Make a booking – bookings are another new feature that’s now available. If your business relies on customers making appointments – such as a hair salon or massage therapist – and you use connected scheduling software, clients can book appointments directly from your GMB listing. This feature makes it really easy to get new customers, because they don’t even have to leave Google search to book an appointment!
4. Owner identity attributes – Google has added new owner identity attributes that allow you to let people know immediately if you are a female-led or veteran-led local business. The information gets added next to other details about your business such as if you have wi-fi, accessible seating, take reservations, etc. This could be meaningful to some potential customers and one to keep an eye on as Google says that it will be adding more over time.

There are many ways to optimise your Google My Business listing and best of all, they’re all free!  If you need any help, contact Breathe Marketing today.

#1 – Continued focus on content

Content marketing has been big for some time now, but marketers worldwide still find it one of the most important areas for growth and attention. From email and social media to online ads and sites, marketers and businesses will continue to develop more strategic, personalised content for their target audiences.

Keep in mind, too, that content is about much more than just ‘words’ – marketers have to be aware of how their audiences access and use content in different formats and on all devices. Mobile content and video remain a key part of the overall plan (more on that below).

#2 – Chat and chatbots

When customers visit a website, they want answers, whether it’s 6:00am or midnight. When your business can provide those answers quickly and easily, it’s more likely that visitors will stick around and convert into loyal, paying customers. That’s why more and more businesses are offering online chat services for customers.

Having a live person to handle online chat is best, but artificial-intelligence-powered chat and messaging tools are already helping businesses tackle some needs. For instance, Intercom’s “Hello, Operator” bot helps businesses answer questions, gather lead information and rate visitor experience, as well as guide viewers to additional information at times when your team’s not available.

#3 – Voice search

Believe it or not, voice-activated search now accounts for 20% of all online searches, and that percentage is expected to jump to 50% by 2020, meaning that this artificial intelligence tool will only grow in popularity next year.

Having fully embraced Google Home this year, and recently purchasing a cellular Apple Watch which works truly ‘on the go’, I can personally vouch for this. What does this mean for marketing? Since it’s faster and easier to speak than to type, users tend to include more words in voice searches – and from an SEO perspective, that means incorporating more ‘long-tail’ keyword phrases in web and ad content than what’s needed in text searches.

#4 – The power of video remains 

Video – whether live streaming on Facebook, in a YouTube tutorial or providing helpful information on your website – is here to stay.

A Facebook video receives, on average, 135% more organic reach than a Facebook photo – and estimates suggest that by 2020, online videos will account for more than 80% of all consumer traffic.  And YouTube? Worldwide, we’re up to one billion hours a day of YouTube viewing.

The good news is, video doesn’t have to take up all of your marketing budget to be powerful. Even if you start small, video is an excellent way to connect with customers and to express the human side of your brand.  Here’s a great example of how I used video for one of my clients this year, as a positioning tool that sits on the home page of their website: https://www.accruharrisorchard.com.au/

Need help in any of these areas for your business? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

The short answer is yes. Creating great content is still key to building your online presence and positioning yourself as an expert in your field.

Here are three reasons why content is still king (and a few tips on creating some):

1) It answers your customers’ questions

Blogs, social media posts and FAQ website pages are a great way to answer questions for your customers.  Answers are available online, 24/7, for customers to find when you and your staff aren’t around to speak to them in person.  Unlike spam emails and unwanted pop-up ads, if viewers find your content through a search, it’s because they were looking for it.

TIP:  Talk to your sales team (or other people in your office who most often deal with customers) and find out the most popular questions asked by prospects and customers. Add questions and answers to your FAQ page on a regular basis, or post them to your Facebook page and then include a link to your website so customers know where to go for the latest information.

2) It makes Google happy

Today, over 93% of all online experiences (on all Internet-connected devices) start with a search engine – and not surprisingly, that search engine is usually Google. That’s why every business owner wants to have their website rank well.While getting a high rank in Google is complicated (their algorithm is made up of over 200 components), there’s no doubt that Google rewards sites for good content. Industry studies consistently show that relevant, comprehensive content is one of the most important factors for better rankings.

TIP: Don’t write content stuffed with individual keywords.  Google prefers more relevant content written in natural language.  On your website, write more content about less topics on each page – you can always create another website page for each topic you want to cover.

3)  It positions you as a leader in your field

When you write informative, non-salesy content that engages your audience, it also helps demonstrate your knowledge of your industry and why people should listen to what you have to say. This is an important part of building trust with potential customers.

TIP: Don’t make the mistake of many companies and use your blog, social media or email campaigns as overt selling tools. Think about the problems your customers are facing and create something that helps them solve those problems.

One final tip – while it’s a lot of work to come up with fresh content for your website, blog, emails, social media posts and other marketing materials, you can often ‘repurpose’ good content and save yourself a lot of time and effort.

For example, let’s say you have some text that’s been written for a company marketing brochure. With a little editing work, you can probably use some of the same information on your website, in a blog post, as a script for a YouTube video, an email campaign, a SlideShare or PowerPoint presentation, or for a Twitter or Facebook post.

Have thoughts, questions or other suggestions about content creation? Need help in producing content for your site? Let me know.

Google also loves online reviews and they help bump up your website in search results. This means that the more reviews you get, the more likely that searchers will find you.

But how do you ask your (happy) customers to write a review (if they’re not already) and where should that review appear online to have the most impact?

Where to start

There are many review sites out there, but right now, there are two primary places where you want to get reviews:  Google (your Google My Business page) and your business Facebook page.

Reviews on these sites show at the top of results if someone does a search for something like, “Tony’s Plumbing Adelaide reviews”.

If you’re in the restaurant or hospitality industry, websites like Trip Advisor are important.  Yellow Pages also has a place for customers to leave reviews, which help get your name into search engines and boost your rank, too.

How to get more reviews

So how do you go about getting more online reviews from your customers? Ask them!  Customers and clients are usually happy to share their opinions and help promote you online.

Ask your favorite clients to post a review when you see them in person. You can also print up small cards, flyers or posters at your business location asking for reviews.

Other options include sending a quick email to select customers, or adding a quick request at the bottom of your receipts, invoices or other pieces of client communication.

A few best practices

Getting reviews from customers can be easy, but there are still a few do’s and don’ts when it comes to online reviews. Here are some best practice tips:

• Basically, the golden rule is that referrals should be natural, not forced, and made over time.  You want searchers to see that customers consistently have a good experience – not that 100 people wrote reviews in March, which can seem fishy.
• Be sure that the IP address of the reviewer is not the same as the one for your business. (In other words, don’t have a customer use your business computer to write the review, or try to post one for them.) This is a red flag to Google that you’re trying to boost your own business by writing a great review for yourself!
• Don’t pay for reviews. Ever. And don’t harass or send a mass email people to requesting reviews. Just find an easy way to prompt customers that if they’re happy, they can jump online and post a quick note.  Some will do it anyway – particularly in consumer businesses – but a gentle prompt never hurts.
• Unless they’ve had a bad experience and want to rant publicly, customers won’t always seek out a place to post a review. So, if you’re sending an email or making a request, be sure to give them a direct link to the review site to make it easier for clients to give you some love.

Need more ideas or some help encouraging clients to promote you? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

On-site (or on-page) SEO is what’s displayed on your website – it’s the written copy your visitors read and search engines see, and it’s what helps give your site a boost in search engine rankings. Off-site (off-page) SEO, on the other hand, involves content outside (and/or linking back to) your site.

Here are four key things to keep in mind for both SEO-friendly and viewer-friendly content:

1. Write for people, not for Google

When writing your content, make sure you write for real, live people. First of all, people who visit your site will be much more likely to read it (and actually spend some time learning about what you offer) if it’s clear and makes sense. Creating good, informational and engaging content takes a lot of time and effort, but it will always help you in the long run.

And when you have new, fresh content available on a regular basis, Google will re-index your site and your customers will keep coming back (and hopefully make additional purchases). Your customers want to see what’s new, understand what’s different about your products and services, get ideas on how to use a product and learn about related topics, so Google will reward you when you show them.

2. Research your keywords and use them wisely

It’s important to do your keyword research (and if you need help with that, contact us) and then put together a plan for where and how they can be used to the best advantage, including within pages and in your meta data. Don’t just create a bunch of sentences that include keywords. Remember, Google and other search engines are getting much better at ranking sites that are designed just to rank for certain terms – a technique known as “keyword stuffing”.

(Remember the bad “black hat” techniques we talked about in our last post? “The Goog” is watching and will penalise you for these sooner or later.)

As a basic guideline for ranking with search engines, be aware that it’s hard to rank for keywords that don’t appear in your page content itself. Each page should be organised around the goal of ranking for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, with a few related phrases and keywords mixed into that copy. You don’t want to overdo it.

3. Don’t duplicate

Make sure that as much as possible, you have unique content on every page of your site. Google claims there is NO duplicate content penalty, but they do recognise ‘thin’ or ‘boiler-plate’ content that’s out there just for the sake of ranking.

If you’re just building your site and haven’t written the content yet, consider creating a spreadsheet to map out what’s going to go where, look for places where you need additional content, and then create pages to fit your needs within that structure.

4. Make sure title tags and content match

As mentioned in our previous SEO post, a title tag is text that’s incorporated into your html to help describe your site content to search engines. Even though a visitor to your site doesn’t see this text on the page, it’s still considered an element of on-page SEO. In fact, it’s the most important on-site SEO element besides your actual content, and it appears in three key places:

⋅ In a browser
⋅ In search engine results
⋅ On external websites (such as social media sites)

It’s critical to create descriptive title tags for your site’s pages that match the content and include keywords to help with your rankings. Remember, if someone finds your site in a search, it may be their first exposure to your site and/or product, so write compelling text that will draw those searchers in.

Finally, in addition to the fact that both Google and your visitors like it, an added bonus of creating good on-page content is that it helps position you as an expert in your field. The more you and your team members write and share knowledge about your products or industry, the more you build trust and loyalty with your audience.

Need help with keyword research or improving your SEO?  Contact Breathe Marketing today.

That’s where SEO comes in. As mentioned in a previous post on SEO, search engine optimisation is all about creating websites so that search engines (namely Google) can easily identify, categorise and select them when a user does an online search. This means that users have an easier time finding your site.

In the past, some companies tried to use underhanded practices (known as ‘black hat’ techniques) to improve their search rankings, such as duplicating content, putting in bad links or adding keywords into their page content just for the sake of getting extra keywords in there (a practice known as ‘keyword stuffing’). But Google is onto these tactics and constantly updates their algorithms to improve results for users and reward sites that follow legitimate, or ‘white hat’ SEO practices.

If you’re building a new site, it’s a good idea to include SEO best practices from the start, but you can also improve an existing site by making adjustments that keep Google (and your users) happy.

SEO is a huge topic (plus there’s onsite and offsite SEO techniques to consider too).  There’s way too much to cover in this blog – but here are 4 best practices for designing or updating a site so that it’s SEO-friendly:

1. Make sure your content can be indexed

Creating good, engaging content for your site will always benefit your company and your viewers. But you can do more to help Google understand exactly what your content is. Why is this necessary? When Google sends out its “spiders” or bots to crawl the web, they collect data to bring back to Google’s massive database. But the spiders can’t ‘see’ images like photos, Flash animation or videos – they can really only collect HTML text – so it’s hard for them to index this information.

Of course, photos and videos are very valuable, because they help you tell the story of your brand, sell your products, make your site more attractive and improve user experience. Therefore, the best thing to do is to help the spiders out by creating ALT text for photos and images (by assigning actual text that explains what’s in them), adding supplemental text for Flash images and providing a transcript for videos and audio recordings whenever possible. Your web designer can help you put all these in place.

If you can get keywords into your ALT tags and transcripts, that’s even better. On that note . . .

2. Watch those keywords, and use them wisely

It’s a good idea to work with your web designer to do some keyword research prior to building your website, because it can help you focus your content, build your meta data such as title tags and descriptions (more on that in a moment) and determine where you can target potential searchers.  To start, you’ll definitely want to include the name of your business as a keyword, as well as particular products or services you offer. If you have a local business, using your name with your location is important for searchers.

For instance, if you’re an accounting firm in Adelaide, you’d probably want to consider keyword phrases such as “Adelaide accounting firm”, “Adelaide accountants”, or “top accounting firm in Adelaide”. As noted above, it’s not a good idea to throw in more keywords just for the sake of getting those terms onto your pages. Doing so makes for bad content, and Google will punish you for this kind of ‘keyword stuffing’.  A good rule of thumb is to choose a couple of keywords to focus on for each page.

3. Title tags

Title tags are one of the most important elements of SEO. A title tag is the main text that describes what’s on a web page or in a document, and these tags appear in three key places: browsers, search engine results pages and external websites. Even though you probably won’t see them when viewing a web page, they’re in the source code and show up in searches.The text in blue below is an example of how and where a title tag appears in search results:

Ideally, each page of your site should have its own title tag – preferably including a keyword or two – so Google knows what each one is about (and so do your searchers).  However, don’t make your titles too long or they’ll get cut off – if you keep your titles under 55 characters, at least 95% should display correctly.

4. Meta descriptions

Like title tags, meta descriptions help search engines and searchers understand what’s on your web pages. Meta descriptions are in your source code and appear underneath your title tag and URL in search results, as shown in the grey text below:

A meta description gives you a chance to introduce your brand and what you offer to searchers before they come to your site – they act as ‘organic ad text’, helping connect searchers to your content when keywords appear in the text and match a search.

With meta descriptions, you have a little more text space than with title tags, but you still need to keep them fairly short and sweet. Ideally, your meta descriptions should be between 150-160 characters so they don’t get cut off.

As I said earlier, there is a lot more to SEO than I can talk about in one blog.  If you need help improving your onsite or offsite SEO, contact Breathe Marketing today.

It was all so beautiful in the beginning.

Your website went live. Then you set up Google Analytics and started checking your reports, getting great information about your customers, how they were using your site and where they were coming from. You were able to use this information to improve your site. And your website traffic was really starting to increase. Fantastic!

But then you noticed something strange: while the number of sessions and users were going up, your time on site and page view averages were dropping and your bounce rate was going up. Way up.

So now when you look at where your web traffic is coming from, you notice that you’re getting a lot more referral traffic . . . and you don’t recognise most of the domain names.  Names like semalt.com, www.Get-Free-Traffic-Now.com, social-buttons.com, free-share-buttons.com and chinese-amezon.com are showing up in your sources and throwing off all your stats.

What the heck is going on?

The bad news:  it’s referral spam bots

Referral spam (a.k.a. referrer spam, log spam or referrer bombing) shows up in your website traffic reports appearing to come from a link on another website. However, the link is actually false and the domain of the website may also be fake.

Why would someone do this?

There are several possible reasons. Just as with email spam, the people initiating this trash are trying to get you to click on something in the hope of getting you to make a purchase, boost their own site rank by getting more visits, or – worst case scenario – bring malware or viruses into your computer.

In addition to being highly annoying and malevolent, these hits on your site ruin your traffic stats, because the “visitors” aren’t real people interested in your products and services. They spend about one second on your site and leave, which causes your traffic stats to go up falsely, your time on site average and page views to plummet and your bounce rate to go through the roof.

The good news: you can do something about these

You’re not alone in battling the bots. There are more spammers showing up all the time and most companies are seeing them in Analytics reports. Plenty of people are frustrated, so chances are that at some point, Google will find a way to put in a permanent block at the data collection level.

In the meantime, if you have a site built in WordPress, you can block crawler spam by downloading a plugin to help block bots. You can also add code to your .htaccess file. Editing code is more involved, and if you do it wrong it can cause real problems, so make sure you work with your web developer for this option.

For ghost spam, you need to use a filter (or segment) in Analytics to block hosts that aren’t yours. There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest we’ve found is to go into the Admin section in your Analytics account and click on Segments under Personal Tools & Assets. Click on New Segment, then click on Conditions.

Create a name for your segment at the top (like My Hosts). Under Conditions, choose Hostname under Behaviour and use the drop-down menu to select “matches regex”. Put your cursor in the box on the right. You should see your domain name (like www.breathemarketing.com.au) show up as the first option. You’ll also see options with strange letter mixes – these are what we want to block, so leave them alone and click the blue Save box up at the top. Now you can choose this segment when viewing your reports to show more accurate visitor information.

Note: This filter doesn’t actually stop the bots from “hitting” your site, but it helps give you a more accurate report. A few bots may still sneak through, but you can usually do a quick removal of them once you look at your referral traffic.

Can’t I just ignore all this stuff?

You can, but you won’t be getting accurate metrics about your true visitors and customers, which means you won’t have the tools necessary to make informed marketing decisions.

Need some help blocking spam or your setting up filters for your Google Analytics reports? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

Enter Hummingbird, the latest update from the search engine giant.

What is Hummingbird and what does it do?

Officially released at the time of Google’s 15^th birthday (at the end of September), Hummingbird has really been ‘live’ since late August. Senior-level executives at Google claim that it’s actually the largest update in the past three years, affecting about 90% of all online searches, and is therefore much bigger than Panda or Penguin.

In general, the idea behind Hummingbird was to make online searches more ‘human friendly’ by better understanding complex phrases and language. For instance, if you type a full question into the search box instead of just a few keywords, Google will show you sites that are most likely to answer that question. Therefore, Hummingbird focuses on all the words in a query and how they connect, rather than only a few terms within that query.

The Knowledge Graph

Hummingbird also makes more use of Google’s Knowledge Graph. Google has been using this knowledge base since 2012, which returns answers to “semantic search” questions. For example, if you type “How many seats in Sydney Opera House” into the search box, you’ll see something like this pop up at the top of your results:

Google uses the Knowledge Base to answer your question before listing any other sites relevant to the performance venue.

In addition, on the right side of your screen, you’ll see more information about the building appear, including the address, the names of the architects, opening date, a Google map, etc., like this:

By providing this information, Google is working to anticipate what other needs and questions you may have, and there’s more of this to come. Google executives have stated that anticipating the needs of searchers is a big part of their future work.

Also, with the explosive growth and use of mobile devices, Google has been working on ways to improve voice search (since, of course, they want to make sure it’s easy for you to get results using your phone). Therefore, Hummingbird better understands phrases that are spoken, rather than just typed.

What do these changes mean for your website?

As we said when Penguin came out: Don’t panic. Having good content on your site is still the most important thing you can do, and the use of keywords in your site still matters. However, anticipating and answering your visitors’ needs will become increasingly important, so keep that in mind as you create new content.

Have more questions about all of this? Need some help? Let us know and stay tuned for future posts on SEO!