What is Google BERT?

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and acts as Google’s AI center for natural language processing. Like RankBrain, BERT utilizes machine learning to better understand queries from a contextual standpoint. However, BERT takes Google’s natural understanding of language to the next level.

Google can already understand synonyms, misspellings and common phrases. Now, with BERT, Google is able to understand language nuances and idiosyncrasies in order to return even more relevant search results. BERT builds on RankBrain and the two work together to create a powerful AI capable of understanding language and context at near-human levels.

How BERT Will Impact the SERPs

Google’s announcement indicated that BERT will be applied on a query-by-query basis, affecting one in ten search queries on average. This still represents a massive number of results, which means businesses should be prepared to see significant shifts in rankings over the coming weeks.

BERT will impact both organic results and featured snippets, altering current rankings to better fit with contextual relevance and user intent. Google was kind enough to present us with a few examples of how users will see the change. In the sample below, BERT is able to understand how the word “to” interacts with the other keywords in the query, and presents information specifically on coming to America, rather than information on travel in either direction.

What does this mean? For searchers, it means less scrolling, bouncing, and follow up searches before they find the content they really want.

For businesses producing content, it means pieces with a highly targeted angle on a topic have a great chance to come up in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) for the most relevant keywords, especially for long-tail keyword phrases.

Google BERT and International SEO

BERT also brings Google’s understanding of language across language barriers. With BERT, the search engine is able to take its discoveries about the context in one language and apply them to other languages– for example, taking what it’s learned about prepositions in English, and applying that to conjugations in Italian or French.

We asked Adam Roth, our Director of Growth & Analysis, for his input on this development. “This is important because it will enable Google to better comprehend the semantics of long-tail searches.”

Roth, who studied machine learning and natural language processing for 5+ years as a research assistant for Carnegie Mellon and Pitt, has worked on advanced analytics projects for organizations like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs prior to joining the team at DOM.

“Previously, this information was separated due to the language barrier and inconsistencies in entity – entity identity across databases. In essence: this update will make Google much smarter,” he added.

While Google has, in the past, been hampered by a lack of algorithmic understanding of international languages, BERT will help close the language divide, ensuring the best results for searchers across the world.

What You Can Do

For website owners and editors, BERT is the line in the sand between the old way of doing SEO, focusing only on keywords, and more natural, big-picture SEO techniques that put an emphasis on linguistic nuance and content quality.

“From an on-page SEO and keyword optimization perspective, we’ve seen great results for clients in visibility and traffic growth when we apply conversational phrases like ‘near me’ to location-based pages or ‘what is’ to blog posts and articles,” said Jonathan Bentz, one of our Senior Digital Marketing Strategists.

“Previous to the BERT update, we would have put less emphasis on prepositions and small language nuances. While we will use these phrases strategically, reducing their emphasis won’t be a best practice for us moving forward.”

While Google (as usual) states that there’s nothing you can do to “win” after this update, what we’re seeing is huge growth for clients who use prepositions, conversational phrases and cultural vernacular.

When looking at your website’s Titles, Meta Descriptions, Image Alternative Texts, and page copy, now is the time to take into account how your keyphrases interact with one another. Consider the intent behind the content of each page: the questions you answer, the information you serve, and the interactive abilities of each URL. Then, imagine the user intent behind your target keywords, and take time to look at the impact of each word in the keyphrase, to better understand the intent behind the query string as a whole.

Remember, as Google becomes more adept at understanding language, the user experience becomes more about conversation than simple question-and-answer.

The end result? Despite, or perhaps because of AI, the future of search is more human than ever.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post The Google BERT Update: Context is More Important than Ever appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

While the algorithm update’s name is far from clever, the announcement marks a change in the way Google handles search algorithm updates. Every few months, Google performs core updates to its search algorithm. But typically these core updates are discovered by site owners monitoring their rankings and traffic. In this case, Google got ahead of site owner speculation by announcing the change 24 hours prior.

Tomorrow, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the June 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this tweet for more about that:https://t.co/tmfQkhdjPL

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 2, 2019

Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison, said that Google’s altered PR approach to this core update does not signify a more robust change.

Nothing special or particular “big.” It’s the usual type of core updates that we regularly do. We just wanted to be more proactive. Rather than people scratching their heads after-the-fact and asking “hmm?,” we thought it would be good to just let folks know before it rolled out.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 2, 2019

As for the exact time, the June 2019 Core Update will trigger, that remains unknown. What I can say is that DOM’s search traffic is experiencing a soft bump this morning. Such information won’t be meaningful until we can detect a sustained traffic trend in either direction. But so far, so good.

This past March, a similar core quality adjustment was also made, so this is the second round of major Google updates in 2019.

We can’t speculate on what June 2019 Core Update’s impacts will be, however, we can safely surmise it will continue to reward strong content marketing efforts. Google search ranking still relies heavily on authoritative backlinks and informative content.

Aside from today’s June 2019 Core Update, Google is also embroiled in a potential DOJ anti-trust case. The effort to reel in Google’s alleged monopoly could result in a bipartisan investigation. Google has a history of quelling government concerns over its business practices, mainly by making preemptive changes.  The magnitude of an anti-trust investigation into Google, Amazon, and Apple, could have resounding effects across consumer and digital marketing platforms.

Interested in learning more about recent Google algorithm updates? Check out this helpful guide to the Google Page Experience Update from our friends at 10web.io.

If you believe your site’s rankings or traffic were negatively impacted by the results of this algorithm update, please learn more about our professional SEO services.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post Google’s ‘June 2019 Core Update’ Just Started (Here’s What We Know So Far) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Along with April comes spring, a feeling of freshness and a new start. April also has one of the most historically dreaded days of the year… Tax Day! Those who wait until the last minute run around all day from the accountant’s office to the post office and everywhere in-between.

Well, thanks to Google, this year the most dreaded day will no longer be the 15th! It will be TODAY: Tuesday April 21, 2015

…the day of

M O B I L E G E D D O N

Google’s Mobile Friendly Update!

What is Mobilegeddon? Are you ready? Did you wait until the last minute? What do you need to know? What do you need to do?

No worries, take a deep breath and allow us to guide you!

What is Mobilegeddon?

Simply put, Mobilegeddon is the day that Google will begin to give a boost in rankings to pages that have earned their mobile-friendly label in mobile SERPs.

Therefore, if you ranked highly for a specific keyword and have not made your site mobile-friendly, there is the potential that you will lose those rankings.

Unlike many other Google updates, Google has been more than fair with this update. They officially announced the update back on February 26th which is the same day that they launched the oh-so helpful, Mobile-Friendly Test. Playfully, the SEM Community has dubbed the day as “Mobilegeddon.”  In the world of SEO this update has occupied a majority of the chatter and shaken up the focus for search engine optimization.

Top Facts to know about Mobilegeddon:

1. 1. The mobile algorithm update will be on a page by page basis. Rather than classifying your entire site mobile-friendly, it is actually possible to have some pages labeled as mobile-friendly while other pages are not. If time is an issue for you, check Google Analytics for your top mobile content and prioritize which pages to update first.
   2. The mobile update is in real-time. This means that as soon as you update your site and then Google crawls it, it will immediately be labeled as mobile-friendly and immediately benefit from the update. We tested this on a client in-house and can verify that this is true! (hint: fetch as Google in GWT use the mobile: smartphone option to submit the updated URLS)
   3. The update will only affect the mobile SERPS. Desktop and mobile SERPs are not the same. Today’s update will only have an effect on your mobile SERPs, therefore you can rank one page for desktop SERPs while ranking on a different page for mobile SERPs.
   4. Google has announced that they will no longer show URLs in mobile search results. Google has begun to replace mobile URLs with the site’s name and breadcrumb path. These changes will roll out gradually and will only affect the mobile search results.
   5. Responsive sites DO NOT equal mobile friendly! It’s very common for business owners to assume that just because they have a responsive site in place that they will naturally gain the mobile friendly tag. While responsive design will re-size the content of your site, you will want to be sure to avoid many common mistakes, including blocked JavaScript, CSS, and image files. (Have you checked your robots.txt file lately?) Allow Googlebot to see exactly what your users see!

Avoiding the Wrath of Mobilegeddon:

Do you want to ensure that your site doesn’t experience the wrath of Mobilegeddon? I sure hope so! Let’s take a look at a few things that you can do rather painlessly and fairly quickly without understanding web development.

Begin by checking your site on Google Webmaster Tools (GWT). If you do not have an account, you should! It’s free, it houses a ton of information about your site, and as I said, it’s FREE! Sign up HERE!

Once you have created or logged in to your GWT account, locate the Dashboard on the left side of the page and click the arrow for Search Traffic. The last item in this category is the Mobile Usability section which will show you not only which pages have mobile usability issues, but also provide links to guides on how to fix these issues. (Tools to prepare for an algorithm update? Again, demonstrating that Google was more than fair with this update!)

As you can see in our example, there are a total of 281 pages on this site with mobile usability issues. Below that you will see a timeline that will give you a quick snapshot of when there was a spike or decline in mobile usability issues. Google then breaks that down even further and will list which pages have which issues. (Please note that one page can appear in multiple categories.) When you click on each individual issue, you will see a list of URLs that are affected by that issue.

Once you have clicked on a URL, you will get a screen that will give you several options for testing or fixing the issues on that specific page.

The 4 Main Components to Determining Mobile Usability (and a layman’s definition):

1. Touch elements too close
   • Buttons, links, or form fields are too small or too close together to be used easily on a touchscreen.
2. Content not sized to viewport
   • Users have to scroll horizontally or zoom out to see the whole page
3. Viewport not configured
   • Code that gives the browser instructions for the page’s dimensions based on device
4. Small font size
   • Page copy is too small for users to read when not on a desktop

You can also check random pages on your site by going directly to the Google Mobile-Friendly Tool. This tool is available to the public and also free to use. Be sure to check several pages before assuming that your site is ready; as I stated earlier in this post, the update is on a page by page basis.

Should you fear Mobilegeddon?

As an agency, we have seen an array of issues and obstacles involving mobile usability issues; however, most have had an easy solution once the developers were involved. For the ones that haven’t, we dove in and conducted further research to find a fix.

Really, Mobilegeddon is just a play on words and should not be feared. While the amount of traffic that comes to your site varies greatly by niche, mobile use has surpassed desktop already and is forecasted to continue to grow. So, wouldn’t you want your users to have a good experience no matter what device they were on? Use Google’s mobile-friendly tags to your advantage (while you can) and complete your mobile site’s “spring cleaning.”

If you are still losing sleep over Mobilegeddon, I’d suggest you call us now!

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post Mobilegeddon: Or Why You’re about to Lose a Ton of Traffic appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

In three days, Google addressed the issues with changes to its algorithm and announced their tweaks, which resulted in a decent sized smackdown on DecorMyEyes.  The part that they got 100% right?  Not singling out the site in question:

Consider the obvious responses we could have tried to fix the problem:

• Block the particular offender. That would be easy and might solve the immediate problem for that specific business, but it wouldn’t solve the larger issue in a general way. Our first reaction in search quality is to look for ways to solve problems algorithmically.

…

Instead, in the last few days, we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience. The algorithm we incorporated into our search rankings represents an initial solution to this issue, and Google users are now getting a better experience as a result.

There are still many bad results out there.  Danny Sullivan pointed out at least one ranking where the site still ranked #1 organically.  But Google gets it reasonably right with at least some of their top results far more often than they do not, which is why they’re so popular.  Do they need to be vigilant about gaming?  Absolutely.  And should they be able to do it and act on it without negative press.  But sometimes it just takes a crisis to motivate people to act, I guess.

The post DecorMyEyes Smackdown: Good for Google (Even if it Took the NYT) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.