There has been some stirring in the SEO world recently as search giant Google has taken steps to move towards semantic search. The concept behind this is for the search engine to get a greater understanding of how words interconnect to become the actual concept the web user is searching for. A classic example of this is the words “Paris” and “Hilton” which search engines will begin to understand as a person, as opposed to a city and a chain of hotels, by analyzing the text surrounding the terms.
We are still a long way from search engines having a full semantic understanding, but as they develop, they intend to assess sites in a less technical manner. They hope to emulate a human’s view of a site, as more and more words and phrases are linked together as concepts and phrases rather than individual words. It’s going to cause a shift in the search engine listings, as every change at Google HQ does, but if pages are optimised according to our guides, then you may find it easier to appear higher in the rankings than before, as other web marketing companies advocate technical solutions rather than human ones. As the search engines shift towards the human approach, many sites optimised for search engine spiders may see their rankings take a beating.
On the other hand, if your pages are divided up into, say, activities and hotels, then Google will better understand the keywords related to the main topic, strengthening their ranking. As the search engines move further away from looking for technical language and code, towards trying to see the web as humans do, it is more important than ever that sites are divided into smaller pages so that Google doesn’t get ‘confused’ over the topic of a page, and can clearly, semantically, say what one page is about. Synonyms will begin to play a larger role, so creating pages not just for “holidays in Greece” but for “Athens hotel” will help Google understand that your site deals with all aspects of a Greek holiday.
And if the pages are keyword enriched for humans and search engines, as has always been our approach, then customers will continue to enjoy the copy, and Google will find it easier to make semantic links between the keywords used on each page. This is a pleasing thing to be able to write given our recent advocacy of copywriters becoming the Princes of SEO,as it is their job to ensure that both humans and search engines are kept happy with the copy by neither overusing nor under-using keywords and phrases. Basically, if your webpage is optimised for human viewing as well as search engine viewing, these changes should do your Google ranking no harm at all.
It is certainly worth keeping an eye on these Search Engine developments but, for the moment at least, the LeadGenerators way of doing SEO remains effective.
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Semantic Search: Can Google Become Human?
