Understand Google's new algorithm - what is Google BERT?
If you're like most people, Google is your closest and best friend when you want an answer to a question. But you've probably also experienced not getting answers to your queries in the seemingly all-knowing search engine.
After all, Google is just a machine that doesn't always understand what people mean. But Google is trying to change that with the BERT update.
But what exactly is BERT? How does the update affect the user experience for the average user? And what does it mean for SEO and content marketing? Find out in this post, where I give a brief introduction to Google's perhaps most important update in five years.
1. What is Google BERT?
In short, BERT is a complex algorithm that aims to make Google better at understanding us humans and all the little mistakes and nuances that are part of our language - and also the way we search in search engines. This potentially makes Google better at delivering more relevant and valuable results to users.
BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and is an artificial intelligence that enables Google to understand linguistic variations in user queries based on context.
The algorithm uses a so-called transformer, which is essentially a mechanism that understands the contextual relationship between words in a text.
In Danish - and other Indo-European languages such as English, German, Italian, French, etc. - we use relationship words to understand the relationship between places, people, times and things. And relative clauses play a crucial role in how we understand and use language. For example, it doesn't matter if you're flying to or from the US - just as it's probably crucial to your pride and confidence that someone laughs with you and not at you.
However, Google is not always good at understanding this. Instead, the search engine often focuses on the keywords in users' queries. In practice, this means that the search results don't always match what the user is looking for.
But with BERT, Google will no longer just read individual words in the query - instead, it will focus on the entire linguistic context and the internal linguistic relationship between words in users' queries.
2. BERT to make Google more user-friendly
So what will BERT mean for the average Google user?
The short answer is: even more relevant and trustworthy results - and thus a better user experience.
The better Google understands how people actually talk and search, the better and more relevant search results the search engine will be able to show users. With the update, Google SERP will be even better at showing users pages that answer their questions - not just pages with keywords or selected words from the query.
Let me illustrate with an example:
You want to quit smoking. But you want to do it without using nicotine products like patches and gum. So you Google "quit smoking without nicotine products".
Currently, Google will typically match single words and phrases like "quit smoking" and "nicotine products" with words in the search results - without taking into account the highly relevant keyword "without". This means that the search engine will show you search results with nicotine products - against the purpose of your query.
But with the BERT update, Google will decode the linguistic context and understand the relationship of the relationship word to the other words in your query. In other words: You will be shown pages that answer how to quit smoking without using nicotine products.
3. How does BERT affect SEO?
It all depends on whether you've kept your SEO up to date - or you're still thinking SEO the way people did in 2010.
As I mentioned in the post "Why your business should write blog posts", content marketing plays a crucial role in SEO in 2019 (2020 coming soon). Relevant and valuable content that answers users' questions has become best practice in search engine optimization.
This means you don't have to worry about poor rankings in search results with the arrival of BERT if your web texts are user-friendly and well-written.
Is your go-to SEO hack to pack your landing pages with the primary keyword? Or do you write countless landing pages with different variations of a keyword, even though they all answer the same question?
Then you should probably consider revising your SEO strategy if you don't want to be left behind in the search results in 2020, when Google expects to roll out BERT in Denmark.
BERT will primarily affect informational keywords - i.e. the keywords that users Google when looking for information on a specific topic. For example, keywords such as "What is Google BERT?"
This means that it becomes less lucrative to write long landing pages and blog posts where your exact match keyword appears unnaturally many times in the text. Instead, you should focus on how you can give your users answers to their questions.
4. BERT's influence on my work
I hope my post has given you a little understanding of Google BERT - although of course I've only just scratched the surface of the almost inexhaustible knowledge that such a complex algorithm yields.
I've tried to describe BERT as objectively as possible. But what do I as an SEO copywriter think about BERT - how will the update affect my work?
The short answer is: positive!
In a previous position at another Danish web agency, I often had to write up to ten variations of the same landing page for one and the same customer to hit as many exact match searches as possible. It could be frustrating because at times I felt like I was writing for Google - and not for people. Thankfully, those days are over.
Today, it's common knowledge that SEO is more dependent on the relevance of content to users. And with BERT, good content marketing will only get easier because Google will be able to figure out what makes sense to the user.
This means that keyword density and exact match keyword usage will have even lower relevance - making it much more fun and easier to write web texts that are both SEO friendly and valuable to users.
5. Is your SEO optimized for BERT?
Are you unsure whether BERT will penalize your landing pages' ranking in Google? Or do you just have questions about BERT and SEO in general?
Then write to me directly at ak@webamp.dk, or contact Webamp on +45 70 60 50 28 or info@webamp.dk for a no-obligation chat with one of our SEO specialists.
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