SEO: November Roundup

I’ll start November’s SEO roundup the exact same way that I started October’s, by saying that Search Engine Optimisation is one of the most mysterious and cryptic industries out there, and it’s only getting more chaotic through the introduction of constant algorithm changes and tweaks. So, let’s recap these so we’re all kept in the loop.

The ROI of Ranking in Google Search: How Organic Search Can Save You Thousands

Search Engine Journal, one of the most respected sources for search engine marketing, created and published a report regarding the return on investment of organic rankings. It is definitely worth a read if you are either paying for or thinking of paying for SEO services.

Source: Search Engine Journal

A deep dive into BERT: How BERT launched a rocket into natural language understanding

Last month G0ogle released a very significant algorithm update called BERT which Google proclaimed as ‘the most important update in five years!’

BERT, standing for:

B – Bi-Directional

E – Encoder

R – Representations

T – Transformers

How do you optimise your website for BERT? It is difficult to say and there is no clear-cut answer.

However, all I can say is that BERT is designed to understand natural language so keep it natural. You should continue to create compelling, engaging, informative and well-structured content and website architectures in the same way you would write, and build sites, for humans.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google’s E-A-T: Busting 10 of the Biggest Misconceptions

Another massive update of recent months is the Google EAT update. Due its size and significance, it came side paired with plenty of myths. This article is a must-read for all SEOs.

According to AJ Kohn, when asked about how E-A-T factors into the current algorithm:

“I feel too many SEOs are thinking expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are ranking factors, but they are not how the algorithm works; they just approximate what it should do. A far better conversation would be around, for example, what would Google do algorithmically to impact those things? When it comes to, say, health – would Google employBioSentVec embeddingsto determine which sites are more relevant to highly valuable medical texts? I’m not sure they are (I tend to think they’re experimenting here) but either way, this is a far better conversation than say, should I change my byline to include ‘Dr.’ in hopes that it conveys more expertise?”

Source: Search Engine Journal

SEO myths busted by an ex-Googler

The article we all need but didn’t know we needed. Have your SEO myths busted by an ex-Google employee!

Source: Search Engine Land