Google switched out the engine on its search algorithm about a month prior to announcing the change on Sept. 26, 2013. Google told us the new engine’s Hummingbird name come from being “precise and fast.” This is the largest change to the algorithm since an update named Caffeine that helped Google process the Web faster and more efficiently. Along with Hummingbird came a focus on intent and understanding more deeply the content being crawled and the relationship between entities.

Key Concepts

One of the biggest concepts that Google has advocated for many years is that content should be written for the visitor and not for search engines. The search engine’s overarching goal is to discover what the user is searching for and deliver content that answers that search query. To help the search engine find your page, think about the information that someone searching for a particular phrase might need to answer their query.

How to Create a Mind

In the real world, our understanding of things is based upon the context used and past associations that we have. If I mention “the panthers” to my buddy Daryl, more often than not we are discussing the Carolina Panthers (NFL team) and not the animal. (We talk about football a lot). When I am discussing “panthers” with my daughter, it is more likely going to be about the actual animal. She has not built an association that a panther can be a football team or a Mac OS update.

Ray Kurzweil is the head of machine learning at Google. His mission is “to bring natural language understanding to Google.” His 2012 “Talks at Google” presentation How to Create a Mind (also the name of his book) is a glimpse into how Google plans to use data, associations and context to help understand and build out models for understanding “things not strings.”

Associations and Structure

The generic concept “lawyer” has many structured associations. Contemplating content for the lawyers at a firm? What type of lawyers are they? Where did they go to school? Where are they located? This is important to think about when creating content or even structuring a site because the better the data can be organized–and the better associations can be made with ideas that reinforce the qualities of a good lawyer–the better positioned your site will be to perform well.

Google targets how people think and process data. If a site’s content is truly useful and credible with visitors, this will translate to better treatment by Google.

Confidence

Confidence is a key notion in programming and in understanding data. When marketers work to obtain citations, links or reviews for clients, what they are actually doing is establishing greater confidence in the site and brand. Google seeks data points that are measurable and consistent. For example, years ago Google decided not to use the title attribute of a hyperlink () even though it would be really informative, because its adoption across the Web was inconsistent.

Pro Tip: Co-citations are a way of building confidence as well. Many marketers focus on links, but having your brand mentioned and identified in authoritative sources is a powerful signal:

“Smith Law Firm, a Florida Personal Injury firm, collected 15,000 signatures to petition the government to install crossing signals at a railroad crossing responsible for 27 accidents in the last 3 years.”

Context

Search Engine Watch’s Grant Simmons does a good job of explaining context:

…Hummingbird is adding a layer of understanding to the query that acts more like an expansion of the query, so that its meaning is clearer.

In this example, I’m thinking Google would interpret the query (“Where can I buy a Larry Bird shirt”) as the following:

Where (Place: User is located) can I buy (Intent: Purchase) a Larry Bird (Person: basketball player) shirt (Product: [via Association of Product to Player to Team] Boston Celtics shirt #33)

He then lays out the following context clues:

Who is searching – based on personalization and prior behavior

Where they’re searching from – location and locality of query

When the search is happening – time of day, seasonality and dayparting

What is the search being conducted on – desktop, mobile, tablet or emerging platforms

How the search query is formed – conversational aspects of the user’s question

Context is important to keep in mind because decisions–like whether to open an office in a particular city, whether to use responsive design (you should), when to set your office hours–will affect whether you are visible depending on where, when and how someone searches for your services.

Pro Tip: Use Google Adwords to test out other cities where you are considering opening an office to see what type of traction you might gain there.

Content

Content is not a page, or a graphic or written text. Content just means what is inside. We tend to think about content in terms of written words, but it is really much more.

I subscribe to several magazines on Kindle. Each month, I flip to the table of contents to look at the topics that interest me. This has a good correlation to an online search, because the search results in Google can be thought of as a table of contents for what is available on the Web about a specific topic or question. In fact, if Google has high confidence in an answer now, they will provide the content and save you a click. On websites, the home page is, essentially, the table of contents for what is on the site. It is the job of online marketers to direct the visitor to the content they are looking for quickly and efficiently.

Structure

Structure is important more now than ever to let Google discern your site’s content. Organize websites’ contents in much the same way that Google and Schema organize data. Thinking about the relationship between the individual pages is key.

We are a Personal Injury Lawyer located in Florence, SC (Professional Service)

• We have Attorneys
• John Smith
• Jane Doe
• We have Offices
• Florence, SC
• Columbia, SC
• We have Specializations/Practice Areas
• We represent in court persons who have been in accidents
• We represent in court persons who have been in auto accidents
• We represent in court persons who have been in truck accidents
• We represent in court persons who have been injured
• We represent in persons who have brain injuries
• We represent in persons who have back injuries
• We represent in court persons who have been hurt by the negligence of a doctor

The above structure is designed with one persona in mind: the visitor who is looking for an attorney to represent them. Other website visitors fall into different categories like referring attorneys, bloggers, media or jurors. Your goal should be to create separate content that is packaged for them, following the same process.

Confidence

Does the visitor (or Google) have confidence in your website? If either were to navigate to the We represent persons who have been in Auto Accidents page above, would they feel confident in your ability to handle their case? What would make them feel more confident?

Could we supply FAQs that answer common questions? Supply social proof, such as reviews and testimonials, of others who have dealt with your firm? List your combined experience in dealing with, say, car accident cases? List the schools where you studied law? List awards you have achieved? Make sure your track record and experience with car accident cases is clearly visible? Ensure that cities, counties and zip codes that you service are clearly visible?

Confidence is the key to winning on the Web and is also the key to winning post-Hummingbird. You have read articles about the need for deeper content, more of a focus on long-tail, more of a focus on triples (subject, predicate and object). What they are really saying is that we need to build content that as completely as possible answers the query (or intent) that the user has when they come to your site. This is not about word count or number of pages; it is about how completely you covered the subject, and whether your content satisfies the user.

Wrapping It Up

I am a big believer in design. Design, like content, is not graphics or navigation or any of the other labels that we add to it. Design is a process of having a goal, doing research, building a prototype, refining the prototype and then creating something that elegantly achieves the goal.

We are all designers at some level. The better we are as designers, the greater the effect our work will have. Every Web page should have a goal, and should be designed for its intended purpose. If the goal is to provide the best page on car accidents, then the entire experience that the visitor has from the first click on a Google result to potentially converting has to be designed around car accidents. Answers to the following questions are key elements in designing a page for a specific goal:

• Does the page load quickly?
• Is the page easy to understand and readable on different devices?
• Is the page easy to understand and read for people with impairments?
• Does the page satisfy the query completely? Are there any other details or supporting content that can be added to increase the visitor’s confidence in the ability of your firm to help them?
• Is the page organized in a way that the visitor can quickly and easily access all of the components that they need to make an informed decision on whether the page is helpful to their query?
• Is there an option to take immediate action?
• Is there an option to schedule action for later?
• If a visitors opens the webpage, is it clear within a few seconds of viewing that this is a firm that can handle his or her case?
• Are we making users “dig,” or navigate to other areas of the site, to complete their decision?
• Do we offer anything the visitor can take with them?
• Does the visitor know there are no obstacles to your firm’s ability to help them?

The key here is not to think about building websites, adding content, adding images or any of the thousands of additional tasks that go into it. Instead, design experiences for visitors. If you do this better than your competition, you will beat them. If our designs focus on the page instead of the parts and ensuring that the visitor is satisfied with the answer, they will be happy; Google will be happy; and you will get cases.

Actionable Steps:

• Read Youtility
• Review your content. Is it “salesy” or useful?
• Get a Google+ account today and start following and posting. Google+ gives Google confidence in the authority of content