In October last year, Google rolled out the biggest update to its search in five years: Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or BERT. BERT uses Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning to better understand the meaning behind longer search queries that we type in the browser’s search box.
Google Search is about understanding language. Its job is to figure out what we are searching for and surface helpful information from the web, no matter how we arrange the words in the query.
With BERT achieving a human-level score of 91.2% in language understanding, Google was quick to state that “BERT has helped us grasp the subtle nuances of language that computers don’t quite understand the way humans do.”
As they describe on their blog, BERT models can consider the context of a word by examining the words that come before and after it and determine its relation to other words in a sentence. That’s why it’s especially good at understanding the user’s intent behind longer search queries.
The new Search works not only in English but in other languages, too, and in some 70 countries around the globe.
Therefore, all that I write below applies to content in many other languages, not only in English.
How does this impact content writing or content localization (l10n)?
Well, BERT can tell if your content is all keywords and no substance — and your rankings will suffer for it.
You already know very well that your business depends on how discoverable in search engines your product or startup is. You need your website to come up in SERPs and not your competitor’s.
Due to its most recent improvement to Search, Google estimated that 10% of search results would be affected. The affected 10% is the content that may have been poorly written, badly localized, or written purely for SEO purposes. How so?
Google makes it clear: Content that reads naturally, is engaging and well-structured, focuses on understanding user intent, and answers user-specific needs will get top rankings.
We need to rethink with what content we fill our websites and product pages.
Keywords are dying away, welcome quality content
With the introduction of BERT into the ranking and featured snippets algorithms, we can finally write naturally, adopt a more casual tone of voice, use colloquialisms and a cadence that you would use if you were speaking, says Vanessa Jones, better known as Jones the Writer.
Realistically, it is no longer possible to optimize for BERT due to its constant learning and adaption. All you can do is produce high-quality content. Vanessa writes on her blog:
Optimizing now means that you can focus more on good, clear writing, instead of compromising between creating content for your audience and the linear phrasing construction for machines.
In 2020, it’s time to take a hard look at the quality of your content — and optimize that content for users rather than search engines, said Michelle Robbins, VP Product & Innovation, Aimclear. She pointed out:
In a way, the key to staying successful in search marketing 2020 is the same as it ever was — put out good content… As the search engines become ever more adapted to natural language understanding, the best-written content — in all forms — will win the day.
BERT has taken a huge leap forward into making search really about intent matching rather pure string matching. Google Search can understand more of the connections between user queries and the content that it is able to index and interpret. That’s why your content should always be looking to answer the questions for the user, and by doing it well, it will enhance your SEO campaign performance in 2020 and onwards.
Jesse McDonald, Global SEO Strategist at IBM, and Jessica Levenson, Head of Digital Strategy & SEO at NetSuite, both said 2020 is the time to move away from the obsession with keywords. We need to stop targeting individual keywords, chasing page views, and “spraying and praying” with content.
The goal of switching the mentality to more of a topic-focus is to create content that addresses an entire conversation holistically as opposed to just worrying about the single keyword a page should be targeting. — McDonald said.
So, if you want to rank high with BERT, the quality and specificity of your content is the most important thing — more important than your word count, how many keywords you have, or the words you use.
Neil Patel in a similar vein suggests that now it’s better to create highly specific short post on a topic that answers one specific user query, rather than a long read on a bunch of related topics.
High-quality content creation and localization are two sides of one coin
When dealing with BERT, there’s no difference whether one is writing content for a website or localizing this content. All the above points on creating high-quality content apply to content localization as well.
With most multilingual websites, you first write the content in one language, and then you get it translated or, more correctly, localized into other languages. In some instances, content is transcreated (transcreation is a form of reworking your content to adapt it better to the target market). Whatever the linguistic process is, make sure that it doesn’t mess up your SEO efforts.
Shaking hands in Frederic Remington’s “The Courrier du Bois and the Savage”
See what the makers of WPML, a WordPress plugin for translating websites, advise in their knowledge base on how to make sure your international SEO is effective. Their main points: You need to make it clear to your translators which pieces of texts are especially important for SEO; discuss with your localizers how to specifically localize key texts (your long-tail keywords); make sure that the localized text is clear to your audience in different languages.
While Motoko Hunt, President of AJPR, a US-based digital marketing firm targeting Asian markets, believes that in the world of international SEO, the time is now to invest in good localization of content:
Many global websites have poorly translated content that hasn’t been edited for the local tongue. It’s not the placement of the keywords, it’s about how well your content is written for the local audience.
As we see, high-quality well-localized content is king in 2020 more than ever.
Start by getting your long-tail keywords rewritten and localized
What if you can’t afford to rewrite your content from scratch to please the new Google Search? Start by rewriting and localizing your long-tail keywords.
It is not enough to have them just translated. Localizing keywords means “researching best working keywords and translating them accordingly.” One common mistake is to assume that direct translation of keywords will work in other languages. Often it will not. Each country is different, even if the people in different countries technically speak the same language.
A classic example: Most Italians tend to search for “voli low cost” for low-cost flights, rather than the direct translation “voli a basso costo.” Or take this one: While a regular French translation of “car insurance” is “l’assurance automobile” the most popular search terms is “auto assurance.”
Also remember the differences between dialects. Just as there are numerous differences between US and UK English (an apartment in America is a flat in the UK and a unit in Australia), the same applies to Spanish, French, Arabic, and many other languages. For example, “a coche” is a car in Spain, but “a baby stroller” in much of Latin America.
Keyword research should be the first step to identify the most popular search queries that people in the target locale use when they want to find a product or service similar to yours. You have to know what words people are actually using in order to successfully target them.
This research can be done by your SEOs, yourself, or your localizers who have sufficient understanding of SEO and tools of the trade. The research done, your localizers can start translating the keywords.
BERT needs regionally correct content
Higher quality content also means more relevant for the target region. Target by country which means that you can include local cultural and geographic references, giving it an authentic feel and making it rank higher in SERPs.
If you translate your website for Canadian readers, then you’ll also pick up European users from France and some other parts of the world. It’s certainly cheaper to have one French website for all these countries. But you’ll be much better off by having separate localized sites for each target country.
Regionally sound behaviour. Painting by Philip Russell Goodwin
This, however, doesn’t imply that simply getting a top-level domain name .ca or adding a subdomain /fr_CA will suffice. Google and other search engines penalize duplication (one of your duplicate sites will be excluded from SERPs), but they don’t recognize it in translation. This means it’s OK if your French and Spanish are direct translations of your English site, but you should rewrite content for your French-Canadian site.
Top ranking with BERT = great user experience = content well-localized
For Google (as well as for most of the other SERPS), user experience is king, more so than ever in 2020.
Erika Varangouli, International Digital Marketing Manager, told SearchLaboratory.com:
Almost every single Google algorithm update over the last five years has indicated that creating a solid user experience is at the top of Google’s agenda. Brands wanting to rank well (and stay there) will need to align their SEO and UX strategies together, ensuring that everything from landing pages to creative campaigns are designed to offer a five-star experience to users.
To ensure top user experience, your local language websites must be well-customized for each locale. Everything from the layout to visuals to currency and date formats must be localized. Of course, poor-quality translation or MT content don’t improve the sort of user experience that BERT expects.
Making sure your product hits the right notes with your international audience requires professional localization. Your product needs more than just a word-for-word translation of the original source for a success. The whole feel of the content needs to be carefully adapted to ensure your international customers engage with your information in the way your main content does.
Hiring professionals that specialize in website localization and marketing translation is very important here.
Quality l10n creates a quality UX, period.
Future-Google-proof your business
Frédéric Dubut, Senior Program Manager at Bing, predicts:
There’s no sign of NLP [natural language processing] and deep learning research slowing down anytime soon, and you can expect search engines to shift even further from keywords to intent in 2020.
Make it your goal to have the best content on the web for your topic, or better an important subset of your topic, suggests Eric Enge, General Manager at Perficient Digital.
By doing so, you will be future-Google-proofing your business.
Quality multilingual content will allow you to compete effectively for long-tail searches (which is about 70% of all search queries, by the way) and will help to build your site authority and demand for your content globally.