Help with hummingbird - Is keyword density involved or something else?

[mixtapekid457]

Hello,

So, I think a few of our clients sites were hit by Google's Hummingbird. The traffic starts to go down after 8/24, one of the days outlined in a Search engine round table article. How does it affect on page content? I was thinking keyword density, has been impacted. I do not write the content for the sites. But, I think that could be a thing. Any info, or suggestions would be great.

[aakk9999]

I am wondering if you can add some more details to help the discussion, specifically:

- how many client sites are you talking about
- how big these sites are (roughly how many pages)
- when you talk about the drop, was it the traffic or ranking or both? Any percentages (traffic) or positions drop (ranking) or both?
- was the drop a slow slide or an immediate drop on the 24th of August
- did all sites drop at that date
- if you look in WMT Queries section, and compare weeks before the drop and weeks after the drop, what can you see with regards to the number of keywords, number of impressions and average positions

With regards to the site content - since you are mentioning keywords density - how does the text look like - does it read natural or does it have lots of keyword repetitions?

[mixtapekid457]

I'm talking about multiple clients. But, for this instance just one.

the site is about 13,000 pages <snip>

It was both traffic and ranking, so i'm assuming because the ranking went down, that's why the traffic decreased.

The drop was slow, but it's been steady since.

For WMT, many of the postions are down, as well as impressions and traffic.

I would say the content seems somewhat natural, but to the human eye looks more keyword rich. Thanks one again aakk9999

[edited by: aakk9999 at 8:30 pm (utc) on Oct 17, 2013]
[edit reason] Please no niche naming [/edit]

[aakk9999]

I am wondering whether you have had the chance to read Google Hummingbird and Related Patents [webmasterworld.com] thread.

You may be right in your guess that the keyword density in the content may be the cause, especially if it looks keyword rich to human eye too.

[mixtapekid457]

I have read the patents, and that thread was extremely helpful. Any other advice you may have? I've also seen that sites, with more authority seemed to have benefited.

[JD_Toims]

I'd personally try to throw keyword density out of my vocabulary. It's obsolete. Natural co-occurrence of phrases on a give topic within low/high thresholds is the new metric, so you could be "spammy" without even knowing it by having too many or not enough phrases that co-occur in "natural" writing on a topic if you're simply reviewing keyword density.

[mixtapekid457]

well said, JD I agree with you. I have been saying that for some time now.

[mixtapekid457]

So, I was watching some videos this weekend. I heard hummingbird seems to be a bit more strict on duplicate/ similar content. Any of you heard about this?