They say SEO is easy, I say don’t you know Google? Google is constantly working on its algorithms to improve the search results it renders for every search query.
Constant is the end. So, marketers have to be well updated with what Google updates often. Google says, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the 15 years working on Google Search, it’s that people’s curiosity is endless. We see billions of searches every day, and 15 percent of those queries are ones we haven’t seen before–so we’ve built ways to return results for queries we can’t anticipate.
Since Google is a place where people come to learn along with surfing what they are already aware of. They make spelling mistakes also since they’ve come to know which means there are high chances of mistakes in the search query, in terms of language and spelling. Google wants to understand even those queries to return the best possible results to the end-user. So, it developed a model that process words in relation to all other words in a search query, rather than reading it in order, one-by-one.
WHAT IS BERT?
BERT(Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) understands the language better, combining the words in the query.
The BERT update is so as to focus on prepositions to understand the conversational queries to render accurate results. For example, results for search queries with “to” and “for” were not relatable enough. Now, with BERT search will be able to understand the context of the words in the query. BERT considers the full context of a word by looking at the words that come before and after it. This is particularly useful in understanding the intent behind the search queries.
BERT IMPROVES SEARCH QUERY UNDERSTANDING
Let’s understand this with the help of a few examples,
(Google explains search improved results with few example )
Suppose I type a conversational query, “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”.
In this query, the relationship between “to” and the other words is important to understand the meaning. My query is about a Brazilian traveling to usa and not vice versa. This is what google showed before and after BERT update,
The previous algorithms wouldn’t understand the importance of this connection(between the preposition and the other words in the query) and returned results about US citizens traveling to brazil.
The result after BERT Update is much more relevant.
But, with the BERT update, you can see the relatability in the result and query.
Let’s take another example… “do estheticians stand a lot at work”
The previous algorithm considered the term “stand” as standing alone without connecting the rest of the words in the sentence with the context.
Now, they understand the word stand here has the context of physical demand. The user is asking, is the job exhausting, do estheticians have to stand on feet a lot?
With BERT, the users can search in a way that feels natural to them. BERT help Search better understand one in 10 searches in the U.S. in English.
How does BERT Update affect SEO?
You need to change your SEO strategy. Since the update is working on language to provide more relevant results, the content on your blog has to be very relatable with the user query.
RankBrain has already nullified the effects of keyword stuffing. Rather than focussing on keyword stuffing and competing for writing lengthy content, focus on providing informative content without extending it unnecessarily.
People usually make three types of queries performing a search:
1.Informational
2.Navigational
3.Transactional
The informational query would be like someone is searching for tips to get fair. They are not sure so they search for “how to get fair”.
Once they perform the search, they may find certain tips like home remedies or some fairness cream, etc. From there, they may search for a solution, using a navigational query such as “Mama Earth”
Once they find the exact solution and like it, they may perform a transactional query, such as “Mama Earth Ubtan”
This explains that BERT Is mainly focusing on top-of-the-funnel keywords which are informational related keyword.
Conclusion
I understand that sounds crazy, but think of it this way… if a person searched for “how to lose weight without diet pills” and they landed for your article about how diet pills are terrific, they are just going to hit the back button and return to Google.
In other words, it is unlikely that the site visitors converted right into a conversion.
Certain, you can lose a few visitors from this update, but the visitors were ruining your user metrics and growing your bounce rate.
Additionally, there is an opportunity to create content that is brilliantly specific. In case you lose visitors, look at the pages that dropped, the search queries that you aren’t ranking for anymore, and regulate your content or create new content that answers the questions people are searching out.
In case you don’t recognize how to do this, simply log into Search Console, click on “search results”, and click on the date button.