Every now and then Google release a new SEO algorithm. Some of them have a limited impact on your search rankings, while others can significantly change the way you look at SEO.
With Google calling BERT “the biggest change to Google search in the past 5 years”, it may well be worth looking at what it is and how it could affect your SEO strategy.
What is it?
BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, which is a language processing technique based on neural networking principles.
It is being introduced in order for Google to better understand queries from users, therefore making the user search in a way that comes naturally to them. It is going to affect ten percent of English search queries in America, showing the significance of the update.
Google said: “These improvements are oriented around improving language understanding, particularly for more natural language/conversational queries, as BERT is able to help search better understand the nuance and context of words in searches and better match those queries with helpful results.
Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”
BERT is about Google understanding what users mean and then being able to connect that to more specific information that already exists on your website.
Does it affect you?
While there is no evidence to suggest that your on page SEO work should change due to this latest update from Google, it is still important to create high quality content that both search engines and users will understand.
Overall, with BERT being able to understand queries better, it means websites with higher-quality written content are going to be more discoverable. Therefore, it may be desirable to create a lot of detailed ‘how-to’ guides and other in-depth content designed to benefit users.
If you are interested in discussing how the BERT algorithm could affect your search page rankings, or any other SEO matters concerning your business, please feel free to contact BBI Brandboost at any time.