My BERT-Friendly SEO Copywriting Cheat Sheet
Like everything else in the marketing world, SEO has drastically evolved throughout the years. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a tactic marketers use to attempt to get their content, landing pages, etc. to rank high on a search engine results page.
Google is the search engine that SEO marketers obsess over, and for good reason. In a study done by Statista, “online search engine Bing accounted for 6.18 percent of the global search market [between January 10- October 2020], while market leader Google had a market share of 88.14 percent.”
The problem with SEO is that it is a lot of trial and error. Nobody, except Google, completely understands how Google’s algorithm works. In fact, Google recently introduced its new BERT algorithm late 2019.
“BERT” stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. Without going into much detail, it is a neural network that is capable of learning forms of human language and expression.
Before BERT, SEO copywriting was all about keywords. Copywriters strategically placed high-traffic keywords into as many places they could on a webpage: in the paragraph copy, in the headers, in the meta data, and even in image alt text. Keywords are still important, but not as important as they used to be.
Since BERT focuses on human expression, copywriters need to stop obsessing with writing only for Google. They also need to write with the human reader in mind.
To help some fellow copywriters out, I have created a cheat-sheet for writing BERT-friendly optimized copy. Check it out below:
My BERT-Friendly SEO Copywriting Cheat Sheet
Step 1: Research and Choose Keywords
Research keywords using a keyword research tool, such as Keywords Everywhere. Choose a focus keyword and a few supporting keywords. These keywords should be evenly dispersed throughout your copy, and should paint a clear picture of what the content of that webpage is about.
Step 2: Plan your webpage
Create a roadmap of page headers. Whether you are writing copy for a landing page of even a blog, strategically organizing headers is extremely important. Most headers should include your chosen keywords, specifically the focus keyword, if possible.
Step 3: Analyze Your Headers
Next, take a step back. Here’s where the humanization starts to come in: read your headers. Ask yourself: “If I were to scan this future webpage by only looking at the headers, would I stop to read the paragraph copy?” Humans have relatively short attention spans, so make sure your headers are interesting and draw attention.
Step 4: Write your webpage copy without angering the all-mighty Google
This step is complicated. Here’s where you have to integrate your keywords correctly without overstuffing them. If you overstuff your keywords, Google could penalize you (so much for that page 1 ranking!) I would recommend keeping your keyword density around 3%.
A sub-note of this step: Google’s BERT algorithm seems to favor long copy. And, the longer your copy is, the less chance you’ll run into keyword stuffing issues. I typically try to reach at least 400 words when I write webpage copy.
Step 5: Have someone read your copy
Show a friend or family member your copy and ask if they understand what it’s about, and if it’s interesting. Nobody, including Google, likes boring, robotic copy. Having an actual human review the readability of your copy will help you eliminate any robotic tones in the written piece. Remember, write for humans first, Google second.