Semantic SEO is more than just another SEO trend just to get ranked higher on Google!
It should matter to you as a business owner because it is about establishing yourself as an authority and your website as a hub for fresh and accurate information.
Which not only improves both your On-Page and Off-Page SEO, but also can help you gain more long-term customers!
In this definitive guide, I’m going to explain to you:
- What Semantic SEO is?
- Why it matters?
- How to do it?
Let’s begin!
What is Semantic SEO?:
Semantic SEO is about creating more in-depth Topical Authority through relevant content that matches a users’ “search intent”or the reason they are making the search and what style of content they are expecting to see.
By performing Semantic SEO you can also help Google:
- Better crawl your pages
- Index your content
- See your website as an authority
How Did Semantic Search Start?:
Now let’s explore how Semantic SEO got started!
The beginning of Semantic Search dates back to a number of important Google Algorithm updates.
These updates focused on ranking websites higher that had topically relevant and accurate information.
HummingBird Algorithm:
In 2013 Google made a huge change to the way it ranks websites in its index.
This update given the name Hummingbird by the SEO community, sought to reward webpages that:
- Had content that matched search intent
- Addressed topics completely rather than sparingly
- Were factual and relevant
I believe this came as a shock to the SEO community:
because prior to the update, Google thought that if a website just contained a specific “keyword” over and over again the website must be relevant to the topic the searcher is looking for.
For instance:
if a website mentions “blenders” over and over again the website must be about “blenders”.
As you can see, this is was a big problem, and Google thought so too!
RankBrain:
This change in the algorithm was fueled by Google’s 2015 revealing of Rank Brain or Google’s artificial intelligence network that improves their ability to better understand semantics and entities.
For instance:
Google now understands the difference between Apple as in the fruit and Apple as in the software company.
BERT:
In 2019 Google again revealed yet another update to their artificial intelligence; BERT, which stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.
Again, like Rank Brain, helps Google better understand what a searcher’s intent is and what content best matches what they are looking for.
Knowledge Graph:
Google keeps a record of Entities in its knowledge base known as the Knowledge Graph.
Google rolled out Knowledge panels to all their searches in 2015.
You may commonly see it on the side of “people” searches like for George Washington.
Google show a knowledge panel that explains more detail about George Washington.
But, for Washington state, the Knowledge Panel would better reflect information about the state; Washington.
Why Does Semantic SEO Matter?:
The reason Semantic SEO should matter to you as business owner because by investing in it you are able to not only increase your visibility on Google, but also you are able to build more value with your audience.
Google refers to this as EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trust), and by watching what you “Eat”
*See what I did there lol*
You can appear to be more credible to Google and thus your website will be more likely to be shown to potential visitors.
Semantic SEO Learning Wrap-Up:
So in this complete guide we went over what Semantic SEO is for beginners, so hopefully by reading this guide you have a better understanding how to optimize your content around Semantic SEO to increase rankings.
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