ClickCease How Will the New Google BERT Update Impact My Website?

Google BERT Algorithm Update

How Will the New Google BERT Update Impact My Website.

How Will the New Google BERT Update Impact My Website.

Today, October 24th 2019, Google announced its newest update to its algorithm, calling it BERT

Google BERT Algorithm Update

Why the Google BERT update matters.

Google says that more than 10% of all search queries will be impacted by this Google algorithm update. By comparison, this will the largest updates to Google’s algorithms in the past 5 years. This follows the September 2019 core update. This means that we need to pay attention!  

 

This means that 1 and 10 search results will be impacted by the google update.  

What Exactly is the Google BERT update?

Let’s skip the tech jargon and jump to what this means in plain english. This update is designed to focus the search algorithm to better interpret the users intent behind the google search. 

 

Over the past five years users have begun using more than five words in their searches to help them get to their answers faster.  The update will help Google understand the context of the words and provide relevant results. This is why it can impact your ranking and featured snippets. 

 

Jeff Haden of Inc.com says “In the past, Google’s algorithm treated a search sentence as a ‘bag of words.’ It picked out what it considered to be the important words–in “who is a great keynote speaker,’ clearly ‘keynote’ and ‘speaker’ are more important than ‘is’ and ‘a.’

 

In short, this update focuses on content that is written in natural language for the user, not a computer!  This means that quality content should be your #1 priority to improve your search ranking

BERT Update Example

Can you get medicine for someone pharmacy?

 

Old Algorithm focused on two primary keywords  “medicine” and “pharmacy”, which would generally return local results because it made the assumption that the user wanted to find a drug store. 

 

Google’s new algorithm notices to less important words “for someone” and now can determine the intent of the search. The user was actually looking for information about whether they are allowed to pick up someone else’s prescription for them.

 

Same search query. Very different results.

 

The challenge is, even a slight modification of a word can alter the actual intent behind a user’s search.

Download Your Free Google BERT Checklist!

    What changes should I make on our website ?

    • The first thing that should be done is to create a baseline of your current ranked keywords.
     
    • Second, monitor those over the next two weeks to see if any keywords dramatically decline. There will be some fluctuation until the dust settles. Do not be alarmed.
     
    • Audit your website and identify content that has been ranking well due to older SEO techniques that could potentially be impacted by the Google BERT update for search intent phrases.
     
    • Take action and update your technical SEO first by adjusting your title tags, meta descriptions, and h1 tags.
     
    • Freshen your blog post and page content that is performing well on Google to ensure that the content is not just stuffed with keywords and that it is written naturally.
     
    • Remove any content that is poorly written with older SEO tactics. 

    Your team needs to develop a thorough understanding of what people want when they search, and why they need that product/service. SEO is a constantly moving target. If you’re willing to invest, organic search is one of the most profitable marketing channels.