How Does Semantic SEO Improve Rankings?

What is Semantic SEO?

Semantic SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your content for collective topics that are connected, rather than single keywords.
That means that when you create digital content which you want to rank for a certain keyword and answer a specific query, you will anticipate the questions that would naturally come to a reader after the initial query. By including the answers to these questions as well, your content has a chance to rank for a variety of relevant keywords, and ultimately a chance to rank for a longer period of time.

Semantic SEO Strategies For Higher Rankings

Optimize For Keyword Clusters

Because Google isn’t reliant on just one keyword per page, your content team should be optimizing your web pages for multiple keywords in the same semantic cluster.

Keyword clusters are groups of similar keywords that share semantic relevance.

By optimizing for these keyword groupings, you can improve the total number of keywords your digital content ranks for and build more meaning into your content.

Improve Topical Depth And Length Of Content

The most simple semantic SEO strategy is to increase the length of your web content by offering a more comprehensive exploration of your topic.

Although content length is not an official ranking factor, longer content is more likely to display stronger semantic signals.

Also, several studies have shown the strong correlation between longer digital content and higher-ranking positions.

Include Synonyms & Related Terms

With Google’s improved algorithms and NLP models, there is no need for users to stuff their content full of their keyword target in order to rank.

Thanks to semantic analysis, Google is smart enough to understand synonyms and related terms.

They’re not a ranking factor, yet adding these terms to the content via page titles, meta descriptions, h1-h6s, and image alt text can improve topical depth and semantic signals, while also making the content more readable and nuanced for searchers.

Answer People Also Ask Questions

Another way to improve the semantic depth of your content is to answer the common questions that users are asking in relation to your primary keyword.

According to a recent study of 2.5 million search queries, Google’s “People also ask” feature now shows up for 48.4% of all search queries, and often above position 1.

Add Structured Data

Although not often thought of as a semantic SEO strategy, structured data is all about directly conveying the meaning of content to Google crawlers.

Structured data makes clear the function, object, or description of the marketing content.

For example, when you use the products schema on a product page, you immediately convey to Google a variety of important details.

That includes information like type, dimensions, color, size, etc.

Use Content Optimizer Tools

Content optimizer tools do the hard work of identifying all of the semantically-related terms for you.

An SEO content writer could certainly investigate the content ranking on the first page to identify the important terms.

But content optimization software does the same work in a matter of seconds.

By adding those terms, topics, or questions onto the page, you improve topical depth and thus practice semantic SEO.

Build Out Topic Clusters On Your Website

Unlike keyword clusters, topic clusters focus on more than just a single piece of marketing content.

Topic clusters are groups of content pieces that are centered around a central topic.

For example, the keyword cluster pictured in strategy #1 is a part of a larger topic cluster focused on link building.

The goal of these topic clusters is threefold:

• irst, improve semantic SEO signals and meaning.
• Second, improve the total number of keyword rankings.
• And third, establish this website as an authority in “link building.”