Category Archives: search engine optimization

Search engines like Google and Bing constantly change how search results are displayed to users. The reason for this isn’t far-fetched: search engines want to be as user-friendly as possible.

Thus, website owners and digital marketers are encouraged to move with the trend by getting familiar with organic SEO, local SEO, on-page, and even advanced SEO. We’ve covered most of this on our blog, as we always do.

But have you heard about semantic SEO? It’s a game changer for brands and businesses to have the desired traffic and conversions from search results. Your competitors may already be implementing this. But there’s no better time to know about it than the present.

This article provides a complete guide on semantic markup SEO, its importance, and how to implement it for your website. Let’s dive into it.

What Is Semantic SEO?

Before we explore semantic SEO, let’s take them apart and look at them differently.

Semantics is understanding language and the intent behind using sentences, phrases, words, or text. On the other hand, SEO is the process of optimizing your website content for users and search engines to earn a higher ranking on SERPs.

Bringing the two words together, semantic SEO is the practice of publishing content for a topic and not just focusing on a keyword. This means you must consider the intent of your audience and create high-quality content that will provide all the information they need.

Those days, digital marketers and website owners earned higher positions on SERPs by repeating the exact keywords all over their content to trick engines. Black hat SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing were abused.

Google and other search engines figured those websites were only interested in ranking higher and not providing relevant content to users. Now, the focus is on the semantic relevance of the content, putting users at the forefront.

For instance, if you google “Cryptocurrency”, you may be dissatisfied with web pages that define it. You’d like to also find out its benefits and how to buy, save and trade cryptocurrencies. A properly semantic content will explore everything behind user intent.  

Thus, semantic SEO requires you to create more depth into every content published, improving the search experience of your audience.

Importance of Semantic SEO

These days, Google bots crawl through millions of pages, analyzing everything about them to better understand them before revealing them in search results.

How does semantic SEO play into all this?

● It helps search engines recognize your content. With search engines making user-friendliness a criterion for ranking higher in SERPs, semantic content is all you need. It enables the algorithms of these engines to see your content as valuable to your potential audience.

● It allows search engines to see you as an expert. Search engines see you as an authority when your content provides a robust analysis of user search.

● It allows users to see you as an authority. Users who stumble on your page to see a comprehensive guide will regard you as an authority. Thus, they’d be more likely to visit again and recommend it to others.

● It helps optimize your content. Another importance is that it allows you to identify areas in your web page to optimize. Thus, the semantic structure provides more value to your users and potential visitors.

● It increases your website sessions. When your website is relevant, people tend to spend more time. This is an excellent sign to search engines that your web page is relevant – another factor it considers for SERPs rankings.

If you haven’t thought about optimizing your web pages with semantically related content, now’s the best time to do so.

Benefits of Semantic SEO

So, what are the benefits of semantic SEO? We look at them below:

Creates Internal Linking Opportunities

One of the beauties of semantic content is that it creates more room to link other pages of your website. The reason is that you’re not only focusing on keywords but covering a relevant topic.

For instance, as we talk about semantic SEO, we can also link why on-page optimization is important because they’re closely related and relevant to having a website that stands out.

Ranks More Keywords

Another benefit is that it ranks more keywords for your web page, giving you better SEO performance. This is because you’d use more semantic keywords instead of focusing on a single keyword.

Of course, your web content will have a focus keyword, but your content will also rank for others. Using latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords are more important than before. It gives your content more insight and context.

Increases Content Quality

Implementing semantic analysis SEO on your content helps to improve its overall quality. This is because your content addresses an entire topic and not just provides answers to user queries.

With semantic content and structure, you can create high-quality web pages that resonate with your audience and search engines.

Increases Session Duration

When your audience finds your content attractive, they will stay longer, increasing their session duration on your website. This is a great sign that your user experience is excellent. It also improves your SEO performance.

How to Do Semantic SEO

From what we’ve discussed, you need semantic SEO to improve your website performance and outrank your competitors during an organic search.

But how do you pull it off? Practice these simple tips:

Optimize for Keyword Clusters

These days, Googlebots doesn’t rely on ranking web pages based on optimizing one keyword. Thus, implementing semantically related keywords into your web content is essential.

Keyword clustering using semantic words will expand your content and topic and allow more keywords to rank.

Create Topical Depth Content

Another way you can pull off semantic SEO on your website is to create a topic that has depth and insight. This means you should practice creating excellent topic outlines for your content.

Here’s how to do it:

● Create a list of queries related to a particular topic.

● Review the user intent behind those queries.

● Identify the target audience and if the content is targeted to a specific location.

● Determine the content for the meta tags, headings, and subheadings to use.

Web content with depth will always attract the right audience.

Answer “People Also Ask” Questions

Beyond providing quality content for your users, you should look at the list of queries under the “People Also Ask” section. This section shows you questions that users are also looking for related to the target keyword.

Take a look at those questions and answer them in your content, as it will improve the depth of your content. One of the instant benefits of this is that it increases the chances of ranking your web pages for different keywords.

Publish Longer Content

You should create long-form posts to optimize your web content for target keywords. You will not be able to explore a topic in detail using 400 words. Content of such word count will not be able to have more room to include semantic keywords.

It would help if you tried to hit above 1,000 words while removing fluff (unnecessary sentences and words) from your content. The aim is to have robust content that people will be interested in.

Use Structured Data

Semantic structured data is the language that the bots of search engines understand. It presents web content in a way that these bots will proceed. Such content happens to get previewed as a featured snippet.

Semantic markup SEO classifies the content on your website, adding more context and helping search engines know what it is all about.

Use Synonyms or Related Terms

The core message of semantic SEO is making use of synonyms or related terms of a keyword. This removes the problem of keyword fluffing and monotonous content that will dissatisfy your audience.

Your content should not only have the main keywords but also make room for variations of the word and make it look as organic as possible.

Conclusion

Semantic SEO is essential to enjoy better rankings from organic searches. Thankfully, our article on the subject matter will inspire you to implement these tips on your website.

But if you don’t know how, you should hire a professional digital marketing agency to handle it. Abstrax Web is a leading premium agency helping businesses and brands achieve remarkable success by reshaping the way they appear from organic search.

Our services include website design and development, content marketing, SEO optimizations, wireframing, and many more. Reach out to us today.

Website owners and digital marketers are concerned about maximizing their site’s potential and performance. SEO is essential in this current age. It’s a foolproof way to attract traffic, increase leads, and improve your conversions.

To rank for specific keywords, it is essential to know the right tools and techniques to deploy. One such tool is Google Lighthouse.

Lighthouse tool is 5a open-source designed to help improve your website’s performance and user experience by running technical checks. It uses a web browser called Chromium to build web pages and analyze them as they load. Because the tool is open-source, it is free to use and maintained by a community of developers.

Lighthouse also looks at the accessibility and SEO performances of your website pages and releases a report which you can use to analyze to improve them.  

This article provides a comprehensive guide on this innovative tool and its use.

How Does Google Lighthouse Work?

Consider what a lighthouse does; it is perhaps the highest point of a building or tower that emits light, serving as a navigational tool for captains of ships at sea. Following that logic, we can see that Lighthouse is a guide for web admins and developers.

Developed by Google, Lighthouse analyzes web apps and pages, generating best practices insights. It checks your website pages and gives instant feedback on errors, SEO, performance, accessibility, and tips on improving your website.

So, basically, Lighthouse audits the URLs of your website and shows you how good or bad it performs under best practices. Google designed the Lighthouse tool to help identify the common preventing sites from being better ranked during an organic search.

You can activate Lighthouse by running it from the command line in Chrome DevTools or as a Node module. It runs a series of audits on a URL page and generates a report for that page.

Each audit comes with a reference document explaining why that specific audit is essential and how to fix any issue.

What Metrics Does Google Lighthouse Measure?

Lighthouse analyzes your entire website based on a couple of metrics. These metrics are grouped into different categories. They include:

● Performance.

● Best Practices.

● Accessibility.

● SEO.

● Progressive Web Apps.

You can select one or more metrics to analyze. We are going to explore these Lighthouse metrics below:

Performance

In the Performance category, Lighthouse monitors how fast a web page or app loads completely. It indicates how quickly visitors can view your web content in its entirety. Some of the metrics analyzed under the Lighthouse page speed section include the following:

● First Contentful Paint (FCP). This is the time spent before the first image or text appears to visitors.

● First Meaningful Paint (FMP). This is the time when the main content of the page becomes visible to users.

● Lighthouse Speed Index. This shows how quickly the web content of a page load.

● Time to Interactive. This shows the time before a visitor can interact with web content.

● First CPU Idle. This shows the value when a web page activity is low enough to enable inputs to be processed.

● Estimated Input Latency. This shows the window of computation during a web page load.

After analysis, you will see the Google Lighthouse Performance Score. The Lighthouse Performance category also comes with recommendations for improvement.

Best Practices

The Best Practices category focuses on the security architecture of your website development. The tool checks if HTTPS or HTTP/2 is utilized by the URL. It also checks to see if the resources on the page are secure.

It also assesses the vulnerability of your JavaScript libraries, APIs, and database connections.

SEO

Lighthouse also runs several checks to see how your web pages appear on SERPs. This category is essential to generate website traffic and increasing conversions. It shows you the errors affecting your website and how to fix them.

Some of the checks include the following:

● The mobile-friendliness of your website.

● Your structured data

● Meta tags.

● Crawlability and index status of your website.

Accessibility

The Lighthouse audit in Accessibility reveals how well your website can be utilized by people with disabilities. This includes an analysis of buttons and links to see whether they’re perfectly described.

It also checks if the images and videos on your website have been assigned an alt-tag so that they can be described by a screen reader for visually challenged people.

Progressive Web Apps

In this section, Lighthouse checks to see how functional the website is. It also checks if it works offline with internet access or returns an error.

It is essential that you run checks on the Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) on your website to monitor their functionality.

Why Should You Use Google Lighthouse?

You know what Lighthouse does, but why should you choose it over other website auditing tools?

● It is user-friendly. One of the benefits of Lighthouse audit is that it is effortless to use, even for novices. Everything is in the right place, and navigation is smooth.

● It is made by Google. The tool is developed by Google, one of the largest tech companies in the world.

● It is free. Lighthouse is free for all users compared to other auditing tools, where you’d have to subscribe to a monthly or yearly plan.

● It is open-source. The tool is open-source by design. This means there are constant updates and improvements implemented on the tool by a group of developers.

The Differences Between PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse

While Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights carry out similar functions, they are quite distinct in some areas. What makes them different?

● PageSpeed Insight is a browser-based audit tool, while Lighthouse runs from the command line of browsers or as a Chrome extension.

● While PageSpeed Insights audits a single web page, Lighthouse analyzes an entire website.

● PageSpeed Insights focuses on the speed of a web page, while Lighthouse explores other metrics beyond speed.

How to Use Google Lighthouse

Now that you know how powerful the Lighthouse audit tool is, how do you use it? There are different methods to utilize it. Let’s explore them:

How to Run Google Lighthouse With Chrome

You can run Lighthouse from the Chrome Devtools of your browser. All you need to do is:

● Download Chrome for Desktop.

● Visit the web page you want to analyze,

● Right-click anywhere on the page and select Inspect.

● Locate the Lighthouse panel and choose the metrics you want to analyze.

● Click Analyze Page Load.

How to Use Google Lighthouse With Web.dev

Another way you can use Lighthouse audit for a web page is by using web.dev. Navigate to the page and input the URL you want to analyze.

You will see the result after the analysis has been completed.

How to Use Google Lighthouse With a Chrome Extension

You can also use Lighthouse on your Chrome extension. If you plan on using Lighthouse frequently, this is an excellent choice. To get started:

● Install the Chrome browser for Desktop.

● Click the extensions tab and search for the Lighthouse chrome extension.

● Install the extension and restart your browser.

● Visit the page you want to audit and click the Lighthouse symbol.

● Click Generate report.  

● It will generate an automated Lighthouse testing and report.

How to Optimize Your Lighthouse Performance Score on WordPress

Follow these tips to improve the Lighthouse Performance Score on your WordPress CMS.

● Optimize browser caching to manage static files on your browser.

● Optimize your fonts and remove unnecessary codes from your content.

● Use fonts preloading to improve the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metric.

● Reduce JavaScript execution time.

● Minimize main thread work.

● Ensure the images and embeds have the proper and uniform dimensions.

Conclusion

Lighthouse audit tool is an essential tool to have in your digital marketing arsenal. Thankfully, this article has explored the concept in detail. So, what are you waiting for?

Abstrax Web is a leading SEO and web design firm designed to help brands improve their SEO performance. Our services include website design and development, content marketing, wireframing, website analytics, and many more.

Reach out to us to see how we can help your business grow.

Outranking other websites during an organic search is one of the digital marketing objectives of most website admins. The rationale is that as more users see your website on SERPs, you can generate potential leads and boost business conversions.

This has led much digital marketing in the past (and even now) to deploy outdated and terrible SEO tactics. One such tactic is keyword stuffing.

It is the process of overstuffing a web page for a particular keyword(s) to rank higher for such keywords during an organic search. It is a manipulative tactic to trick search engines. However, it has now become outdated and redundant.

They are found on the meta tags, page lists, and additional keywords to sprinkle around the page. Filling your web pages with such keywords will create a poor user experience for visitors looking to find valuable content.

It is also a black hat SEO strategy, meaning search engines can flag and penalize your website. While it might’ve been an honest mistake, you should take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

This guide will explore everything you need to know about keyword stuffing and how to avoid it.

Examples of Keyword Stuffing

Spam stuffing is a terrible SEO strategy that should be avoided. This is how it looks on a website. The keyword used is “Lego toy”

Lego toy is an exciting gift you can present to your children. A Lego toy is a beautiful and stylish toy, so buy a Lego toy today. With beautiful Lego toy, your kids can have fun with those Lego toys. Their afternoons and evenings will be spent having fun with these Lego toys. So, grab a Lego toy for your kids today.

The paragraph above comes with a lot of problems:

● Keyword density. The passage shows that ‘Lego toy’ appeared seven times in a paragraph with 63 words. Search engines see this as unacceptable. It would surely earn your website a penalty.

● Audience targeting. Look at the passage critically. You will see that it is not published for people to read. It was meant to trick search engines into ranking the web page for those keywords. Any person that reads this will not bother going through the entire content.

● Content intent. When you read that passage, you get zero sense of purpose. The entire paragraph is just a placeholder for “Lego toys”.

You need to write your content with your target audience in mind. Editing and proofreading your content enables you to spot and correct keyword stuffing.

Does Keyword Stuffing Helps Rank Your Page?

Targeted keywords are a ranking factor on Google and Bing. However, people began to abuse that opportunity by stuffing their websites with the same keyword.

Search engines realized that users were no longer receiving valuable content, as website admins focused more on irrelevant keywords all over their web pages. Google released the Florida update, which targeted spammy links, reducing the impact.

But the problem still persisted. So, the search engine released the Panda update, which demoted sites with spam stuffing in SERPs. Soon after, the Hummingbird update followed, changing how results are displayed on SERPs.

Google has always frowned at keyword stuffing. So, no, stuffing your page will not help rank your page.

Is Keyword Stuffing Good for SEO?

Keyword stuffing goes against the best SEO practices for websites. It is an outdated and terrible technique for optimizing web pages.

Google released Quality Guidelines warning website admins not to embark on the practice. It doesn’t only result in a poor user experience but will affect your ranking position on SERPs.

User experience is a ranking factor for SEO. If people cannot relate to your article, they will leave. This increases your bounce rates which is a bad SEO signal.

Why Should You Avoid Keyword Stuffing?

From what you’ve read, keyword stuffing is bad for business. But why should you avoid it entirely?

● Drives away your visitors. When visitors land on your website, they want to see content relevant to their search intent. With spammy keywords all over the place, they will leave and never recommend your website to anyone.

● Your content will appear repetitive. Stuffing your articles and web content with the same keywords will make your content repetitive and robotic. People will not spend much time on your website if it feels that way.

● Your domain authority will be affected. When your content has spam, it demotes your brand as an authority. Your website will not earn backlinks from other websites if it is filled with repeated words.

● Search engines will penalize your site. Search engines will demote your website in their result pages when it looks spammy. This means your website will not be visible to anyone from an organic search. Thus, you will miss out on visibility and generating leads.

How to Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Do you want to avoid spam stuffing your website? Follow these simple tips:

● Have a primary keyword. You know what your website offers. So, have an assigned primary keyword with other related search terms.

● Maintain a great keyword density. This is the number of times a certain keyword appears on a web page. You should keep it moderate for the best results.

● Create longer content. The longer the content, the more space to spread out the target keyword. However, the content should also be relevant.

● Add the target keywords to the page element. The target keywords should be on your web page elements such as meta title, meta description, headings, and subheadings. Be careful not to overstuff it everywhere.

Does Google Penalize for Keyword Stuffing?

Google strictly warns against irrelevant keywords for websites. They will penalize your website by demoting its position on SERPs. This means you won’t anymore if you are enjoying massive traffic from organic searches.

It is essential to avoid it entirely, so your website won’t suffer from such a fate.

How to Do Proper Keyword Optimization

The success of your digital marketing campaigns lies in the keywords you optimize for SEO. So, how do you conduct proper keyword optimization for your website?

● Conduct keyword research.

● Look at the keywords your competitors are using.

● Avoid keyword stuffing.

● Create content that matches the search intent of your visitors.

● Audit your meta tags.

How Many Keywords Is Good for SEO?

After deciding which web page to optimize, you need to determine how many keywords will suit its SEO performance.

Your content should have two or three primary keywords to target for the website. If they’re more than that, placing such keywords into your meta tags will be difficult.

Having fewer primary keywords will make it easier for Google bots to rank it during an organic search.

Abstrax Web Can Do SEO Right for Your Business

Avoiding keyword stuffing is essential for your website performance for organic SEO. You need to contact a professional if you don’t know how to customize your web content without overstuffing it.

Abstrax Web is a leading digital marketing firm that will help generate more visibility, traffic, leads, and conversions for your website. Our services are specially tailored to your individual needs. They include website design and development, content marketing, mobile usability, website wireframing, and many more.

Reach out to us to see how we can help your brand.

People search the internet for content for different reasons. Thus, it is safe to conclude that while some search queries might be similar, the user intent behind that query might be distinct. Every website wants to outrank others during an organic search, to generate more leads and fulfill brand objectives.

The key to achieving that is taking the search intent of your visitors into consideration. When a customer intent is not considered in the grand scheme of your marketing, it will not yield positive results. So, what is it in the first place?

Search intent (or user intent) is the reason behind a search query. It is also regarded as the motivating factor behind a search. Why did the person pick up their phone to conduct a search? What are they hoping to find? What do they want to do with the information? More so, will the results displayed satisfy their curiosity? The intent of a website query is to find information.

Google algorithms such as Hummingbird and RankBrain consider each customer search and display results that are suitable to their query. Understanding how search intent plays into your SEO campaigns is essential.

This article breaks it down, showing you how you can use commercial intent to your advantage.

Why is Search Intent Important to SEO?

Search intent is the core reason people use search engines on their devices to look up information. Anyone with a pressing design to know something will always utilize search engines like Google and Bing to look for answers.

Initially, digital marketers and website admins only optimized their web pages with keywords, disregarding the quality of the content. However, search engines have evolved, leaning toward user intent and experience and providing the best results.

Thus, it is not only essential to optimize your web pages using targeted keywords. You must also provide valuable information to match those optimized keywords.

Why is user intention important to SEO?

You Position Your Website As An Authority

Providing visitors with information that matches their query helps establish your website as an authority in your niche. It tells your audience that you know your onions and can provide relevant answers to questions they have about something.

Establishing your website as an authority means more people will visit your pages. More so, you will be better ranked during an organic search.

Increase Brand Awareness

When people search for content and see your website on SERPs, it’s an opportunity for them to learn about your business. Your website can only appear on SERPs when your content matches user intent.

Conversely, people will spend more time on your website if your content is engaging. By doing so, they learn about what you provide and boost your conversions. They will be more likely to recommend your website to someone as it satisfies their needs.

You won’t have to worry about your competitors when your website provides relevant information to search intent.

Fulfill User Needs

Another reason why search intent is essential is that it fulfills the needs of your visitors. Let’s say someone wanted to search for “How to take care of pets”. If you have an online pet retail store, you can create content that answers that user query.

However, if your content mainly focuses on the items in your retail store, it doesn’t match the user’s search intent. The user intends to discover tips to take care of their pets and not products for their pets.

When you provide content matching a keyword intent, they will value your website and subconsciously be interested in your offer.

Generate Direct Leads

When people land on your website pages and see the answer to their query, there’d be less need to visit another website. They will continue to remain and engage with your content.

This increases their time spent on your website, which is a great signal to Google. The more time people spend on your website, the greater your chances of ranking higher during an organic search.

Understanding customer intent generates more leads for your business and better rankings on SERPs.

Why is Search Intent Relevant for Your Business?

Search intent is the driving force of SERPs. But how is it relevant for your business? We look at the reasons below:

● Helps you narrow down your keywords. Search intent allows you to identify which keywords to optimize. Without it, you’d be optimizing random keywords that offer zero value to a visitor.

● Provide valuable content. When you know what your potential is searching for, you will be able to provide valuable content.

● Improve user experience. People positively perceive businesses and websites that satisfy their search intent.

● Rank better in SERPs. If your content fulfills customer intent, Google will rank it better than others during an organic search.

4 Types of Search Intent

Search intent comes in different forms. They are broken down into the following:

● Informational

● Commercial Investigation

● Transactional

● Navigational

Let’s look at them in detail.

Informational Search Intent

Informational search intent simply means a user wants to learn some info about someone or something. Most search queries of this nature usually pose questions utilizing words such as who, what, where, when, how, and why?

For specific queries, Google might use SERP features to provide direct answers. Most search queries are informational. Thus, you can take advantage of that to improve your visibility.

Commercial Search Intent

Let’s say you want a new laptop but don’t know if you want an HP Envy or MacBook. The search you conduct to compare their specs is commercial search intent.

Google presents results from web pages that compare the two products. At the end of the day, the user will make an informed decision after reading up on commercial search intent.

Commercial search intent isn’t limited to product comparisons. Users might conduct this type of search to look for customer reviews, demonstrations, recommendations, and other pages that will provide details about a product.

Transactional Search Intent

Transactional search intent means visitors plan to do something specific in person or with their devices.

Transactional keywords in search intent aren’t limited to purchases. It could be searching for email signups, form submissions, or store visits. While Google usually displays the results in a carousel, it also provides additional information on the knowledge panel.

Navigational Search Intent

This kind of search intent means visitors want to discover a physical address, website domain, or contact information.

Google works to deliver the results using SERP features like map packs or knowledge panels. You can incorporate navigational keywords into your website to ensure visitors locate you when they need your services.

How to Determine Search Intent

There are several ways you can determine the search intent of your target audience. They include:

● Read the SERPs. Type the keywords related to your business and study how the results are displayed. It will give you an idea of how to optimize your web pages for more visibility.

● Use Google Ads to determine the extent of the intent. While you may not intend to use Google Ads, you can look it up to see how much people are willing to pay to rank for specific keywords.

● Use Google Analytics. You can also use Google Analytics to identify the search intent of your visitors. You can look up Organic Search, Pageviews, Session Duration, and Exits from the dashboard to see how people interact with your content.

How to Optimize for Search Intent

With everything you’ve learned, how do you optimize your web pages for search intent? Follow these tips:

● Conduct keyword research.

● Study SERP features.

● Look at the People Also Ask panel to identify keywords to optimize.

● Learn from your competitors.

● Categorize your content ideas by search intent.

● Think like a customer to discover keywords they might use.

Conclusion

Understanding search intent is essential to a successful digital marketing campaign. Thankfully, we’ve explored everything you need to know about customer intent and how to optimize your website for it.