Bert is a new update from Google. If recent announcements from Google are anything to go by, a new update known as Bert is on the pipeline. This has got people off-guard. They don’t know what to do. Will it affect your ranking? But what’s all about this new update? Does it matter? Should you spend your valuable time understanding this new update? The Google BERT Algorithm: Will It Affect Your Rankings? Well, this article contains everything you should know regarding the Bert Update.
The Stats
According to the stats, Bert is designed to affect about 1 out of 10 search queries. Bert is the update that has ever happened since Google released RankBrain. Because of this, there’s really a good chance that this move will significantly impact your site. But before delving into how this update affects SEO, it’s important to first understand what this update is all about.
So, What is Bert?
Bert is an abbreviation for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. Perhaps, you could be asking yourself what that means. Google, in essence, has upgraded its algorithm to better explore natural language processing.
When you enter a flight number into Google, the flight status will automatically be displayed. Or a calculator might pop up when you type a math equation. And if you feed in a stock symbol, you’ll get a stock chart. You could also start typing anything into Google and its autocomplete feature will be able to figure out you’re searching before you finish typing it in.
Is it Useful?
Before Bert, the top search result would be how American citizens can travel to Brazil without requiring a visa. But when you look at that query more carefully, you’ll realize that it’s slight, but it makes a big difference. In the real sense, the search wasn’t about American citizens going to Brazil, instead, it was about the Brazilians traveling to the US.
After the Bert update, the result becomes more relevant. At the moment, Google is taking into account prepositions such as “for” and “to”, which can have several meanings to the search query.
Previously, Google used to match terms. For instance, their system used to confuse “stand” with “stand-alone”. But now, they understand that the word “stand” bears the context of physical demand.
The Change
Bert isn’t the only change. Google has also made significant changes to featured snippets. For instance, if you previously searched for “parking on a hill without a curb”, Google used to put too much emphasis on the term “curb” and minimal emphasis on the word “no”. And that makes a big difference in the search results.
The new changes brought about by this algorithm update makes it more relevant for searchers and creates a better experience for you and everyone else who utilizes Google.
How Does Bert Effect SEO?
You really need to change your SEO strategy. And there are three common types of questions that most people usually make when performing an online search: informational, transactional, as well as navigational.
Typically, an informational question is like someone looking to lose weight and they aren’t sure about how they can search for “how to lose weight”. Once they perform the search, they might actually find a solution like different diets. And from there they can search for a solution with the help of a query like “Atkins diet”.
Once they’ve figured out the exact solution, they might then perform a transactional search query, like “the Atkins diet cookbook”. Bert is hugely impacting top-of-the-funnel keywords that bare informational related keywords.
If you want to maintain your rankings and also gobble up some of the competitive rankings, a simple solution is to get more specific with your content. When you create unique content, which is the simplest way to rank for informative keywords, SEOs prompt you to create super long content.
Of course, you might see that most of the longer-form content ranks higher on Google, but their algorithm doesn’t necessarily focus on word count, rather, it focusses on quality. Bert wants SEOs to focus on crafting content that’s fundamentally great, exceptional, useful, and compelling.
When utilizing tools such as Ubersuggest to search for new topics, you need to ensure that your content is super-specific. For instance, if your business is about fitness and you regularly blog about “how to cut weight without taking pills”, your content should not focus on diet shakes or supplements. Instead, it should concentrate on all the alternative methods.
Of course, shakes and supplements might not be diet pills and aren’t the same keyword but be sure that Bert will get more sophisticated in the near future and it will better understand what people are truly looking for. Besides, you should avoid focusing on keyword density.
It’s projected that keyword density will become less important as Google continues to expand and gains a better understanding of the context of the content you’re creating.
Bert Takes Into Account Context
With Bert technology, Google has a tool that can help it better understand client search queries as a whole as opposed to a string of text words. It’s important to note that most people type a string of words when doing Google searches. Before Bert was introduced, Google used to bank on AI to interpret each word individually. However, Bert allows Google to understand. It then tries to understand how these words relate to each other.
The Extras
According to experts, Bert:
- Bert helps Google to have a better understanding as far as prepositions are concerned
- Bert affects only 10 percent of searches—mostly to U.S.English
- It tends to only work on snippets
The Bottom-Line
Bert is coming. But that doesn’t mean you get scared. It’s just an update like any other. All you need is to brush your skills a little bit. The above guide is all you need to know about Bert—the newest Google update that might affect your Google ranking. So, invest in knowledge and keep your site ranked higher on Google.