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.