When it comes to SEO, Anyone who develops the content researches the content, writes the content, publishes and markets the content, all know at least the basic crux of the SEO. Google may shift its guidelines and algorithms frequently. Still, the main goal and objectives are very clear, that is to help users with original and helpful content that’s still understandable by the search engine and bots. On that note, semantic searches are the best way to optimise the content for Search engines and are useful for the users.
Read the blog post fully to find out why and how you can implement semantic search in your online content and know how semantic search can impact your SEO results. Let’s start with a semantic search first.
What is Semantic Search?
Semantic search is the most effective technique for data searching that saves time and effort. Whenever a user searches for any search query, search engines not only consider this as a keyword and search for relevant results; instead, it goes beyond that search query to consider the user’s intent on this search query and the contextual meaning related to the keywords. Practically speaking, this adds the layer of understanding from users’ data for any search query from the users to provide them with the best possible results.
Understanding Semantic Search
Creating content for both the users and search engine is not enough, you should understand whether the search engine can read and understand your content. But now, the machine element, the search engine, has become far more advanced over the years, and the context of content has become important. When the search engines can understand the context behind the content, then it becomes easy for the Search engines to place our content in the exact place where it is intended to be. With a deeper understanding of any content by advertisers and marketers at the search engine level, meaningful links between content can be made, which improves the user experience by google.
Before this semantic search update, Search engines require exact matches from the users for search engine results page visibility. The algorithms are far more sophisticated today to Focus on semantic search, so marketers and content creators need to keep semantic search in mind for their strategy. Using a semantic search strategy can improve your SEO content and help meet people’s needs better.
Marketers and brand ambassadors must understand what search engines like google focus on while ranking a website. The primary focus of search engines is to identify the search intent behind the search query from users, so make sure you also can identify what is the Search intent behind the user’s search query to develop content for them. Search intent may vary, like they may try to learn, find or buy something on the search engine. So try to tap into your targeted audience’s search content and get more traffic by presenting the most accurate results to them.
More like linguistics, semantics refers to all the important use of terminology online, starting from the meaning of words to the relationships between those words. In other words, words mean more than what they read, the meaning of the words is also significant, because the meaning of the words changes when it comes to certain situations. The wonder is, nowadays, search engines can also understand these different meanings of the same word on the web. Let’s recap the history of online searches, years back search engines were very simple, in which keywords were the main ranking factor, over some time, search engines have developed and now there are over 200 Ranking factors to rank a website in search engines.
Inserting the same words repeatedly all over the content implied that the content matched the user’s search query. This was easy to hack and it was termed keyword stuffing (referred to as black hat SEO), and people were stuffing keywords wherever possible to gain higher rankings. Even in some cases, the content is relevant to What the user Searched for, but the user’s experience was poor those days, which makes users leave the search engine. But with the advancement of technology and more data, a search engine has, Nowadays search engines can deliver high-quality and useful content to users. That brings us to today, where we’re seeing search engines that are more intuitive than ever.
Google Updates Support Semantic Search
So, how does this relate to searches today? Google’s algorithm updates over the years, particularly Knowledge Graph, Hummingbird and RankBrain are geared towards semantic searches. These updates not only improved the algorithm but also incorporated the power of artificial intelligence to analyse the top-performing search results.
Long-tail keywords became more of a focus when Google introduced the BERT update in 2009. This update is said to be the most important one in 5 years. With this, the search results can address phrases and present searchers with more relevant results and accurate information.
All of the aforementioned factors result in better search results and an overall improved user experience. This needs to be rolled out in conjunction with technical SEO elements for optimal results, like link building, site speed and optimised site structure. There is also the Google EAT principle, which stands for content expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
Optimize Your SEO Strategy with Semantics search
Semantic searches are one of the main reasons for the rich and featured snippets in the google SERP, on which we see these as concise answers to a query in an online search. To optimise your content for this, you can ensure that your content contains the answers to these queries, and you have to perform schema markup for your content. Content already ranking in the first 3 positions for a Search query is more likely to appear in the featured snippet. There are some other ways to improve your semantic search SEO, you can:
Prefer writing guides and long-form articles. Instead of writing a lot of short-form articles to rank high in the search engine results, try to focus on creating valuable long-form content like guides and ebooks that serves almost all the query a user might search on on one relevant topic.
Put the search intent in front of the mind. Understand the user’s search intent and deliver the answer written away in the top section article or the website. Don’t make them search for the answers by surfing through the whole website. Most probably, if the user doesn’t find any information within an average of 10 sec, he or she might leave your website and check the relevant information from the other sites.
Keywords are still important, there are many types of keywords, informational, transactional and navigational keywords. You have to mix one of its types with the other two keywords. However, ensure these are featured along with relevant and related keywords.
Include structured data in your content by adding schema codes. This helps search engines to categorise the content to make them appear in the featured snippet section of the SERP.
Study the features snippets and then incorporate your findings when creating content so that your content can also be featured over there. However, featured snippets are not necessarily taken from the highest-ranking search result, but most probably from the pages ranking on the first page of SERP.
Natural Thought Patterns Meet Better Searches
The way people ask a question when talking versus typing the same question can be different. Semantic search is also closely linked to voice search. Voice searches tend to include longer phrases, casual language, and questions, whereas text-based searches are more direct so that more natural language can be used to find relevant content.
When the semantic search comes into play, the context allows you to factor in differences in tones and dialects, in the same way, that voice searches do. When you focus on direct word translations, searches can be ambiguous. This way of conducting searches allows search engines to discern various entities and interpret factors based on the individual’s demographics and interests.
Ready to Rise in the Search Engine Results Pages?
The Creatives 360° is a digital marketing agency based in Sharjah, UAE. Where we offer a range of digital services from SEO services and google ads services to social media campaigns. Get in touch with us to improve your ranks on the search engine results pages. We’ll create a tailored SEO strategy for your business that includes a full-scale SEO plan for the next 6 months, and of course, includes the increasingly important element of semantic search.
