Semantic SEO | In 5 Steps

Semantic SEO | In 5 Steps In this article I will explain to you everything you need to know about semantic SEO and how you can use it for your website to improve your ranking and organic traffic step-by-step, using Semantic SEO for higher rankings and some basic processes information. So with that, let’s first start with the basics.

What is Semantic SEO? Semantic SEO is a process of analyzing key topics and subtopics that are important to your business to create relevant content by targeting keywords and their appropriate words to create topic relevancy and increase topic signals to improve your ranking of the overall niche.

Now, this is the definition of semantic SEO. However, as you can see, semantic SEO means many different things, so let’s explain each of them separately. First, to understand it, we need to look at Google Semantic Search.

Semantic SEO | Google can better understand the natural language

Since Hummingbird’s update in 2013, Google prefers pages and websites that match the search query’s meaning rather than pages with the stuffed matching keywords within the text. And what it means is that it prevents stuffing keywords within the content to “win” the favor of search engines to improve ranking. Hummingbird update encourages web developers and writers to use natural language instead of using forced keywords and stuffing keywords everywhere.

And as the technology is getting better and new updates were rolling out, such as RankBrain in 2015, BERT in 2019, Google MUM, and Google Passage in 2021, Google semantic search is getting better, and Google can better understand the natural language and the search intent. Therefore Semantic SEO is about finding the right words or phrases commonly used and associated with your targeted keyword.

And this gets us to the second part of Semantic SEO and what it means. Now, publishing content on your website and including relevant key phrases in your On-page SEO is just one piece of a pie.

As I mentioned in the definition, you need to analyze critical topics to create relevant content to increase topic signals. A well-known SEO strategy from HubSpot, the Topic Clusters, explicitly targets this part of Semantic SEO. It means that instead of just focusing on targeting keywords, you switch topics in the niche you want to own. For example, one of the main topics in digital marketing is SEO.

So, for me to own this topic, I must create as much content around it to create semantic relevance on my website and interconnected together with internal links And by linking all internal content within that topic to a pillar page, search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yandex can easily scan all the content and understand that there is a semantic relationship between the pages’ content and that my website is about SEO.

Semantic SEO | What are semantic keywords?

Therefore, semantic SEO and SEO overall strategy create relevancy on your website and focus on topics and not just key phrases. However, this doesn’t mean that keywords are dead. They are more critical than ever before, and you must be more strategic about what keywords you are targeting. What are semantic keywords?

Why Do You Need Semantic SEO? First and foremost, Semantic SEO addresses some of the most important and latest Google ranking factors and algorithm updates. Thus, you can improve your ranking, views, and impressions.

It also helps SEOs and content marketers to create more comprehensive pieces of content with a satisfying amount of information that answers searcher’s questions. Therefore, semantic SEO helps websites being established as the trusted source for the topic within the niche. And not only it helps with creating content that answers the search question, but also Semantic SEO helps you create content that matches the search intent or make the exact content your users want and answer their questions.

And because semantic SEO is all about creating as much content around the content with a satisfying amount of information, it helps improve the overall Google E-A-T, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. And overall semantic SEO is the way how you should think about creating content if you want to be successful with SEO, and that means:

• Focusing on topics and make as much content around it.

• Provide a satisfying amount of information within your content.

• Optimize your website and content for your niche.

Thus, since Google implemented algorithms that support semantic SEO, we can see fewer and fewer spammy websites run by one person who writes about everything. We can see more niche websites dominating the search in an area of their expertise.

Optimize your website and page for semantic SEO

And now, let’s move on to how you can optimize your website and page for semantic SEO in a step-by-step process.

Step #1: Find Your Main Topics The first step in Semantic SEO is to find the main topics you want to own in the search. This highly depends on the industry you are in and on what you are focusing on there. It is crucial to decide the right topic to generate organic traffic and leads from organic traffic.

Because remember, organic traffic doesn’t pay the bills.

Now, most likely, you can come up with main topics quite easily as often your industry, products, or services are considered the main topics. For example, in the digital marketing niche, the main topics you can target are “SEO,” “lead generation,” “content marketing,” “email marketing,” “digital marketing,” “technical marketing,” etc.

Another example could be a computer eCommerce shop where the main topics could be “keyboard,” “computer mouse,” “gaming computer,” “gaming laptop,” “computer screens,” “graphic cards,” etc. As you can see, anything general that can have more subtopics could potentially be your main topic. The main topic is also called the seed keyword, and it is used to find relevant subtopics.

Also, before we get started searching for keywords to be qualified as the main topic, the keyword must:

• Has high search volume. This depends on the industry you are in. It could be tens of thousands in some sectors, and in others, hundreds of thousands.

• Has many keyword ideas. Usually, if the primary or seed keyword has at least 2,000 keyword ideas, you will be able to create at least 20 subtopics to target.

Cannot be too generic: Often, one-word keywords like “car,” “marketing,” “computer,” “technology,” and others are too broad to be targeted. Therefore narrow down your target keywords to a more specific type of category. To learn more about seed keywords and keyword research, do not go for the extra-large keywords with hundreds of thousand keyword ideas because if the keyword is too broad, it would be tough to create enough content to create topic relevancy can mean anything.

First, I recommend you stay with topics with a maximum of 50,000 keyword ideas if you use SE Ranking unless you have a large content marketing team. With that, let me show you my three favorite ways to find main topics or seed keywords within your and other niches. And for that, let’s suppose I am in the gardening niche, and I want to find seed keywords to set an example.

Some useful Techniques; Analyze my Competitors.

Technique #1: Competitor Analysis So, the first technique to find topics to write about to improve my semantic SEO is to analyze my competitors. Now because I don’t know any website about Gardening, I can put the keyword “gardening” into Google search and choose from any top-ranking competitors.

And I have chosen this one because if I create a gardening website, it would be structured like this. Therefore I found this website as a great competitor and starting point to find main topics. When I have the competitor website, I can plug it into SE Ranking competitive research tool, select my target location and hit analyze. Of course, you can also use different SEO tools to do that, or you can try SE Ranking for 14 days .

And here, I will get important information about my competitor’s website, such as their organic traffic, paid traffic, domain trust, and organic keywords report. And by clicking on the number of keywords, I will get their list of keywords they are ranking for and other helpful information such as the keyword difficulty, search volume, website ranking position, and the traffic the keyword brings to the website.

And by scanning their keywords, I can find some interesting topics that I can start targeting on my website. For example, topics like snake plants, palm trees, or raised bed gardens are some excellent main topics.

Technique #2: Wikipedia Page Another great place to find main topic ideas is using Wikipedia. For example, the Wikipedia page on Gardening is full of great ideas for main topics such as container gardens, root vegetables, leaf vegetables, or ornamental plants.

Again, you don’t need to and shouldn’t target everything. I recommend you target topics that are closely related to your products or services. For example, if I am selling vegetables, I would pick the topics “root vegetables” and “leaf vegetables” as these are super relevant to my business. I can naturally include my products within the content later.

Technique #3: Brainstorming And the last technique is brainstorming.

Probably the most effective technique to come up with main topics closely related to your business is to talk to your sales, directors, customer service, or any subject matter experts within the company, and they will probably give you tons of great and super relevant topics ideas you should create content about. So, these are some of the strategies you can use to generate main topic ideas. And once you have your topic, we can move to the second part.

Stay tuned! The second part is here! see ; https://seobegood.com/semantic-seo-in-5-steps-part2/