I’ve used the popular WordPress Yoast SEO plugin for a long time, and found it helpful in placing keywords or phrases strategically in my posts so that the Google search engines would give them higher page rankings. However, I just watched a video about the new search algorithm from Google, called Hummingbird. Experts agreed that the former one depended mostly on keywords. So web writers were advised to use one key phrase or word in the title of a post, and if possible in the first sentence or two, and also in the meta data. When that keyword or phrase was strategically placed, it was assumed that the post would be search engine optimized.But perhaps no longer, because Google’s new search algorithm pays less attention to keywords and more to semantics– so say those in the know. This may actually be good news to writers not so given to minding the jot and tittle, but simply devoted to composing cogent and coherent pages. The experts in the video below suppose that one way to get good page ranking via Hummingbird will be to write just one topic per page. Since Google never has divulged the secrets of its algorithms we will have to experiment and watch our page rankings to see what seems best, SEO-wise.
Here’s a video about the changes in Hummingbird: