Mathematical Foundations of Text Vectorization and the Sentence-BERT Algorithm (understanding SEO content analysis)
Description
This document presents a concise, math-forward background to vectorizing text into vectors (embeddings), explains why cosine similarity is a principled measure of semantic relatedness, and adds a dedicated section on “The math behind the Sentence-BERT algorithm.”
The goal is to connect linear-algebraic derivations (e.g., PMI factorization) with modern transformer-based encoders used in practical SEO workflows.
It also gives a brief overview of practical impact on modern SEO work like Topical authority, content clustering, internal linking and optimizing relevance for backlinks.
In the end we also have a short introduction to IncRevs own Semantic Tool called "QueryMatch". This tool will be presented in its own research papers and case studies.
Files
Mathematical Foundations of Text Vectorization and the Sentence-BERT Algorithm – David Vesterlund at IncRev SEO Research Community (DOI- 10.5281:zenodo.17570412).pdf
Files
(423.2 kB)
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:ff1e79fb93c401de67b7e5574b70323d
|
423.2 kB | Preview Download |
Additional details
Related works
- Is published in
- Other: https://independent.academia.edu/DavidVesterlund (Other)
- Is supplement to
- Preprint: 10.5281/zenodo.17360293 (DOI)
Dates
- Issued
-
2025-11-10
References
- Levy, O., & Goldberg, Y. (2014). Neural word embedding as implicit matrix factorization. NeurIPS. https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2014/file/b78666971ceae55a8e87efb7cbfd9ad4-Paper.pdf(NeurIPS Proceedings)
- Mikolov, T., Chen, K., Corrado, G., & Dean, J. (2013). Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Space. arXiv:1301.3781. https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.3781 (arXiv)
- Pennington, J., Socher, R., & Manning, C. D. (2014). GloVe: Global Vectors for Word Representation. EMNLP. ACL Anthology: https://aclanthology.org/D14-1162/ (PDF: https://aclanthology.org/D14-1162.pdf) (ACL Anthology)
- Reimers, N., & Gurevych, I. (2019). Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks. EMNLP. https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.10084 (ACL Anthology: https://aclanthology.org/D19-1410/) (arXiv)
- Shaun Anderson, SEO Hobo, SEO Strategies 2025 about Googles ranking factor Topicality (T*) https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/hobo-strategic-seo-2025.pdf
- IncRev article on Semantic SEO https://increv.co/academy/semantic-seo/
- IncRev article on The QueryMatch tool https://increv.co/academy/seo-research/querymatch
- IncRev article, vectorization of content simplified https://increv.co/academy-research/semantic-vectorization-seo