Google is re-writing the rules of SEO.
As a journalist, I kept hearing that Google “Authorship” was the new thing. Then Steve Cunningham came along at FaffCon6 and blew the doors out.
Cunningham is a professor at USC’s Thornton School of Music. In his spare 
time, he’s an audio engineer, a voice-actor, and dabbles in all matter of virtual and device-driven technology. His Curriculum Vitae is impressive, including working in the video game industry as a freelance dialog editor. Lucky for us, he likes Voice-Actors, and keeps coming back to the event to bring us up-to-date.
Steve held a break-out session on the SEO Myths that he’d be glad to share with you, I’m sure… or someone has the notes. (I got there a few minutes late).
But the gist of it is: throw out (almost) all you know, or thought you knew about enticing the minions at Google with SEO wizardry. Gone are the titling tweaks, the keyword cryptography, and the tagging tools. Now…it’s about content and relevancy — and the inter-relations of words as dictated by readership.
Look, I’m no expert at this… I was just starting to think I knew something about the “old” way of SEO, and now I’m starting all over again.
At least this new way of doing things makes more sense from a human perspective. Much of the new search algorithm (called Hummingbird), is more based on conversational and natural semantics. It’s also changing the trends in search engine results dramatically already. Some of the previously high-ranking sites are dropping, and some of the low-ranking sites are rising. (Google began implementing it clandestinely more than a month ago).
The new Hummingbird algorithm is based on:
- Relevant content
- What the reader wants
- The user experience
- Compelling, unique, interesting content that can be trusted
- Social Media being related to SEO
Bottom line: sites that “think like the reader” will succeed most.
Somehow, after listening to Steve, and doing a little research on my own, I think my blog is doing just fine, Thankyou. Coming soon: integration of my blog with my commercial demo website.
CourVO