That’s when the three algorithmic updates

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Below come into play. Hummingbird Back in 2013, Google launched a search algorithm called Hummingbird to return better search results. It was especially helpful for complex search queries. Hummingbird was the first colossal update that emphasized the meaning of search queries over individual keywords. It was the much-needed catalyst for writing about topics, not keywords. RankBrain If you’ve ever encountered the phrase Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI keywords, forget that. Google solves the problem that LSI was created to solve with an algorithm called RankBrain. And we already discussed the problem earlier. It was about the mismatch between the language used in search queries and the desired content. Google’s RankBrain is powered by technologies that are way superior to LSI.


In layperson’s terms, RankBrain understands the meaning of even unfamiliar words and Special Data phrases by using sophisticated machine learning algorithms. And that’s huge considering that 15% of all search queries are new. We can consider RankBrain an upgrade to Hummingbird, not a standalone search algorithm. It’s one of the strongest ranking signals, but the only thing you can proactively do to optimize for it is to satisfy search intent. BERT Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) is the newest huge upgrade to how semantic search works. It affects approximately 10% of all queries since the end of 2019. Don’t worry; it also took me quite some time to even remember what BERT stands for. All you need to know is that BERT improves understanding of long and complex sentences and queries. It’s a solution for dealing with ambiguity and nuances because it strives to understand the context of words better.




And while you can’t do anything to optimize for BERT per se, it’s good to know what it means and what it does in a nutshell. How to adapt your SEO for semantic search I’ve already sprinkled some hints and tips throughout the article. Now let’s get truly actionable. Target topics, not keywords Assess search intent Use semantic HTML Use schema markup Build your brand to become a Knowledge Graph entity Build relevancy through links 1. Target topics, not keywords In the old days of SEO, you could have ranked high with separate pieces of content about the same topic, but targeting slightly different keywords like: open graph tags open graph meta tags og meta tags open graph tag what is open graph facebook open graph tags That’s no longer the case.