1. What is Google BERT?
In short, BERT is a complex algorithm designed to make Google better at understanding us humans and all the small mistakes and nuances that are part of our language, as well as the way we search in search engines. As a result, Google can potentially get better at delivering more relevant and valuable results to users.
BERT is short for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and is a form of artificial intelligence that enables Google to understand linguistic variations in users' queries based on the given context.
The algorithm uses a so-called transformer, which in short is a mechanism that understands the contextual relationship between the words in a text.
In Danish, and other Indo-European languages such as English, German, Italian, French etc., we use prepositions to understand the relationship between places, people, times and things. And prepositions are crucial to how we understand and use language. For example, it matters whether you're flying to the USA or from the USA, just as it probably matters a great deal to your pride and self-confidence that someone is laughing with you and not at you.
However, Google isn't 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 searching for.
But with BERT, Google will no longer just read individual words in the query, but will instead focus on the entire linguistic context and the internal relationship between the words in users' queries.
2. BERT is set 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 with them a better user experience.
Because the better Google understands how people actually talk and search, the better and more relevant the search results it can show users. With the update, Google's SERP will therefore get even better at showing users pages that answer their questions, and 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 such as patches and gum. So you google “quit smoking without nicotine products”.
At present, Google will typically match individual words and phrases such as “quit smoking” and “nicotine products” with words in the search results, without taking into account the highly relevant preposition “without”. This means the search engine will show you search results with nicotine products, completely at odds with the purpose of your search.
But with the BERT update, Google will decode the linguistic context and thereby understand the preposition's relationship to the other words in your query. Or to put it another way: you'll 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 whether you still think about SEO the way people did in 2010.
As I touched on in the post “Why your business should write blog posts”, content marketing plays a crucial role in SEO as of 2019 (soon to be 2020). Relevant and valuable content that answers users' questions has become best practice in search engine optimisation.
This means you needn't fear poor rankings in the search results with the arrival of BERT, as long as your web copy is user-friendly and well written.
But 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 fall behind in the search results in 2020, when Google expects to roll BERT out in Denmark.
That's because BERT will primarily affect informational keywords, i.e. the keywords users google when they're looking for information on a particular topic. That could be keywords such as “What is Google BERT?”
This means it will become less rewarding to write endlessly long landing pages and blog posts in which your exact match keyword appears an unnatural number of times. 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 basic understanding of Google BERT, although of course I've only scratched the surface of the almost inexhaustible knowledge that such a complex algorithm yields.
I've tried, as far as possible, to describe BERT objectively. But what do I, as an SEO copywriter, think of BERT, and how will the update affect my work?
The short answer is: positively!
In a previous job at another Danish web agency, I often had to write up to ten variations of the same landing page for one and the same client to hit as many exact match searches as possible. It could be frustrating, because at times I felt I was writing for Google and not for people. Fortunately, those days are a closed chapter.
Today, it's becoming common knowledge that SEO depends more and more on how relevant the content is to users. And with BERT, it only gets easier to do good content marketing, because Google will find it easier to work out what makes sense to the user.
This means that keyword density and the use of exact match keywords become even less relevant, and that it therefore becomes considerably more fun and easier to write web copy that is both SEO-friendly and valuable to users.
5. Is your SEO optimised for BERT?
Are you unsure whether BERT will penalise your landing pages' rankings on 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 70 60 50 28 or info@webamp.dk, and have a no-obligation chat with one of our SEO specialists.
