Does Google BERT Impact Your Content Strategy?

Last year in 2019, Google came with a lot of updates and improvisations. Due to the updates, the Google algorithm turned out to be smarter than ever before. Which pushed marketers a bit hard to change and improvise things in their marketing strategy to rank on Google.

Algorithms are getting smarter day by day and to maintain the position on google is getting tougher.

So, how will BERT impact your content strategy? As we know, content is the core of any marketing strategy.

In these past updates, BERT is one of the biggest updates by Google affecting about 10% of search queries.

BERT stands for- Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformer, helps Google to understand better what exactly searchers are looking for- It’s a never-ending process…

Behind this big BERT update, we heard from the Google Insiders sharing a piece of advice-

“There is nothing special you need to optimize content for BERT. You just keep creating high-quality genuine content and keep the user in mind.”- Danny Sullivan

There is a lot of myths about Google BERT.

First of all, it did not have much impact on your content and SEO marketing strategy.

The primary motive for this update by Google is to understand customer behavior more clearly.

But there are a few changes occurred that you should consider while putting up your plan.

Descriptive Queries

After the BERT update, most of the websites are hit with a 20% to 30% drop in their traffic. This update is primarily affecting our search queries in the way it is giving priority to the most direct answers, rather than comparison, long-form or navigational results.

In simple words, we can say this update is pushing up the result which has the most precise and direct answer to the search query. Any content with loopholes or not up to the topic will not be getting any attention in Google’s eyes.

Precise Answer of the Search Query

Maintaining Keyword density! Okay, now we are over this… It’s still important and effective. But there are many more things you need to consider while creating your content strategy.

Long-Tail Keywords and Questionnaires are still a priority-nothing new in this!

Through BERT update they tried to make things more simple and clear to a searcher. No, we are not saying that you don’t need to optimize content keeping keyword density in mind, it’s about writing and structuring content most simply by providing a direct answer to search and informational query.

Why this?

Now Google is indulging in understanding their searchers more closely and ensuring that a person gets a precise answer for their query.

What are the 2 things need to focus, while developing content

• Understand the pain point of the searcher. (the search query).
• Creating a precise and to the point content (Solve the pain point).

Simple As That!

Consider yourself, you were searching for something and to know the answer you need to read the whole content. Which is not important!

You don’t want to read the whole content to find your answer. Through this update, you will get the exact answer.

Make sure you deliver a precise answer through your content!

Let’s take an example-You wrote content about Digital Marketing Service. In this, you have a section of social media marketing, PPC, SEO, much more.

You elaborated on every service, which is not required. It has got tougher to get ranked on the specific query asked in search.

Such as-

• Social media management pricing — 100–1k Search/month
• Why digital marketing is important for small business — 100 Search/month

In the above scenario, the best practice is to create two separate posts to justify both the queries.

Lengthy Content is not the key factor to rank anymore.

It has happened to all of us. When we enter into the realm of SEO, we’ve been hearing that lengthy content is preferred by Google and can help you rank faster on Google.

But through the recent update by Google, it has become less relevant now.

As we are saying, the BERT update pushes the content which is conceived more precise and relevant content for the search keyword.

We can say that creating precise content without going out of context will help to rank better. However, it depends on how precise and specific the search query is.

Moreover, for the broad search terms like “How to increase ROI” or “How digital marketing has changed in 2020”, a thorough explanation would be expected.

The short search queries like “What is Digital Marketing” or “ What is On-page SEO” doesn’t require a book to explain. It should be short, simple and to the point…

In the end, the crux is to provide content that gives the searcher a precise and accurate answer- said to be done!

Conclusion

There aren’t many changes that occurred due to the BERT update compared to the Google panda. But, still, you need to improvise content strategy and be more precise about the content.

As Google saying from Old times “Create high-quality content keeping the user in mind”.

As things don’t change much, start pushing questions in your content keeping the relevancy in mind and you don’t need any extra efforts to optimize your content or SEO strategy according to the Google BERT.