Google has just announced the most important update in five years. With the BERT update impacting 10% of search queries Dedred Coms is here to explain exactly what BERT is and how will it impact SEO.
Google’s official statement: “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. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”
BERT stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.” It is an algorithm that helps Google learn the subtleties of speech. In an earlier blog we spoke about Semantic SEO and how LSI keywords are being recognised by Google and the importance of optimising not just for a seed keyword but for a whole sphere of related topics, and this is all just part of it’s mission to fully understand the complexities of speech in order to make its search results even more accurate.
What it means for SEO practices
Now more than ever content creators must ensure that the copy they write is not only topical but also extremely well written, well-linked, and have a high text to image ratio. If the focus on a page is weak then it will not be rewarded. As BERT is an update that improves how Google interprets and understands searcher’s queries, it will work in conjunction with many other algorithms in place, but it cannot be denied that the task of utilising words in certain ways, precise order and linguistic structure in order to build context around the topic are of utmost importance.
An Example of BERT in action
Take for example this search term
“How to tie a bow to a dock”
Previous search results presented various instructional gift wrapping articles and images to do with tying a bow in ribbon, even though the searcher had specified they meant the bow of a ship to a dock in a harbour. Even though bow and bow are the same word, the context around it provides understanding, and now with BERT a search like this yields the following result:
BERT has recognised because of the context in which I said ‘bow‘ that I mean the bow of a ship or a boat, and only provides results that are relevant.
How DEDRED COMS can help
If you’re feeling a little lost, don’t worry. Get in touch and our fully professional SEO team can guide you through the services we offer to ensure your website is performing at its absolute peak!
