When businesses want to improve their website’s standing, the common tactic is to rely on SEO guidelines and techniques. However, over the years, SEO has evolved, and there are now multiple ways to achieve a better ranking in SERPs. At Click SEO Services, we employ various traditional and cutting-edge digital marketing strategies to improve the SEO for our client’s websites. Besides optimizing the keywords, click-through rate, CTR, domain authority, and other complex performance indicators – you should take a moment to think about what you are saying and the intent behind those words. Enter semantic SEO, focused on the language we use and your ability to leverage words and sentences to improve your rank. Read on for a comprehensive guide on how to use semantic SEO for higher rankings.
What is Semantic SEO?
Search Engine Optimization traditionally relies on adjusting the structure of your website and its content to make it more appealing for search engines such as Google. Let’s face it unless your site manages to rank on Google’s first page for your chosen keywords; you may as well not exist. Honestly, when was the last time you ventured past page one when looking up something?
Keeping up with Google’s webmaster guidelines is no easy task. The algorithm regularly receives updates and has become quite proficient in understanding the intent behind user searches. Google believes that the best way to provide users with relevant search results is to train its algorithm to better understand language. Therefore, to keep up with the SEO arms race, you’ll need to use semantic SEO for higher rankings, or you’ll get left behind by the competition. Semantic SEO instills more meaning and depth into your website design and content creation.
7 Ways to Use Semantic SEO for Higher Rankings
1. Know Your Audience
Although the language is universal, there can be major differences between age groups and target demographics. One of the essential SEO tips is to know who your customers are. However, when going customer research for semantic SEO, you should also look into how your target demographic uses language to express themselves. Make sure you are up to date with the common phrases your customers use when talking about the types of products or services you provide.
2. Understand What Customers Are Searching For
Besides getting familiar with your customers’ language and phrases, you should also research how they perform searches. First, you must know the intent of the searches and what kind of information regarding your products that users will be interested in. For example, if users are mainly interested in price, technical specifications, or shipping information, include them in your SEO.
Additionally, you must consider syntax and sentence structure. Look into how users phrase their searches since the syntax will differ for typed and voice searches. People tend to use a more relaxed tone when performing text-to-speech searches. Typed searches also tend to be shorter on mobile devices
3. Check What Your Competitors are Doing
It’s always a good idea to peek into your neighbor’s backyard. You don’t necessarily have to imitate what they are doing, but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, either. Thankfully, there are multiple competitor analysis tools that can be helpful when trying to evaluate your competition. These tools can help you know which keywords they are competing for or how much traffic their website is getting. You can then use that information as a guideline and a benchmark for how your campaign is progressing.
4. Improve Your Internal Linking
When discussing internal links and SEO, most developers are focused only on linking structure and page hierarchy. Unfortunately, most of them disregard the importance of anchor text. However, if you want to use semantic SEO for higher rankings, it’s essential to employ meaningful and contextual anchor text.
If you want to make navigating your website easier, you should include links to other relevant pages on your site. Consider linking to related products or to pages that offer more information on the same topics. Most importantly, you should make it obvious and intuitive for users to understand where those links will take them.
5. Create Searchable Content
Content marketing has been all the rage for several years, but merely churning out content for publishing something will yield diminishing returns. To be effective, you must properly structure your content. Of course, numerous SEO content guides are online, yet many neglect semantic SEO.
If you want to stand out from the competition, we suggest you focus on long-form content. Understandably, it’s challenging to regularly produce well-researched and in-depth articles. Thankfully, you can outsource content creation to professionals who can create compelling content that will draw the attention of both users and search engines. On the other hand, if you decide to tackle writing your articles, it would be best to include synonyms and related terms. Although your content should be professional and informative, remember to structure your sentences, so they resemble natural speech.
6. Use Keyword Clusters
On a similar note, there is no need to limit yourself to one keyword per page. Actually, you will get the best results when grouping similar keywords together. Keyword clusters represent groupings of words that have semantic similarities and relevance. Instead of repeating the same keyword too many times (and risking keyword stuffing), you can increase the number of different keywords in your content.
You can take this approach a step further and even form topic clusters. These represent multiple pieces of content grouped together. You can link all these articles back to a central page which can help build page authority.
7. Have an FAQ
It’s a good idea to include a dedicated FAQ page on your website. It can serve as a central resource hub for users who require more information, and it’s also great for answering user questions. Remember to include the actual questions since that can get you featured on Google’s “people also ask” section of results. FAQ pages can also be a great opportunity to leverage local SEO by including detailed information on the location of your business.
In Conclusion
As you can see, if you adopt a user-centric approach to your content and website development, it will be easy to use semantic SEO for higher rankings. Don’t treat SEO as a menial task where you merely tick all the required boxes for the sake of appealing to Google’s algorithm. Google has gotten much better at determining which websites offer actual value for end users. It’s time to step up your game and transform your website into a place people will want to visit.