what is semantic SEO writing – best practices for SEO

Semantic SEO will help your blog posts to rank higher in search engines. In this blog post, I have completely explained Semantic SEO writing.

Semantic seo writing for blog posts

What is semantic SEO?

Semantic SEO is the way of writing content as search engines optimized around the related keywords. 

In another way, semantic SEO writing is the writing content around the group of keywords, not just for one keyword. Semantic SEO writing involves using many keywords that revolve around the main keywords.

Why you need semantic SEO?

Semantic SEO helps search engines understand completely about the page. It also helps the search engines to identify the intent behind the user’s search.

Semantic SEO is also one of the marketing techniques, that helps to boost your website traffic.

In the olden days, when writing content the author only focuses on a particular keyword. That is the way search engines also worked and optimized. Search engines completely focused on only the keyword.

For example,

 If a user is searching in the search engines for “SEO tools to boost traffic”.

In the back days, google searches for pages with the exact keyword phrase. 

But you have written pages around, with keywords “best SEO tools”. It shows google, that your page is completely about “best SEO tools”.

To rectify it, google had a new update with their algorithm in 2013, named “Hummingbird search algorithm”. 

google released hummingbird algorithm - semantic seo favoured update

This hummingbird algorithm changed many things in google’s work.

This algorithm has major changes, without looking for one keyword around the page, it scanned the complete page to know more about the topic.

For example – after the update, if you are searching for “SEO tools to boost traffic”

SERP results screenshot

It shows the results like,

Seo tools to increase your traffic, best SEO tools to increase your search engine rankings, content marketing tools.

It is the way google changed a lot. By understanding the overall topic and user’s intent, google shows you the results. 

Most time, we enter only 2 to 3 keywords in the search engines and we need results around those keywords.

For example – look at the below screenshot

SERP results screenshot - semantic seo

When entered for cheap burgers, google identifies that you are looking for a restaurant or bakery, where the burgers in Singapore are available for affordable prices.

This is what Google exactly does through, semantic SEO.

Semantic SEO writing – best practices for SEO

Post-topic-relevant content

Publish the content relevant to the topic. 

If you want to rank higher for a particular keyword, then do an in-depth article in that particular keyword, which covers all the topics related to that keyword.

For example – see how backlinko did it

They published a definitive guide to mobile SEO. They covered all the topics, that were relevant to mobile SEO.

mobile seo screenshot

Their keyword is only “mobile SEO”

See they are ranking high in search engines for the keyword “mobile SEO”

mobile seo search page screenshot - semantic seo

They ranked top, because their topic was totally relevant, and covered all the related keywords in the mobile SEO.

Plan subheadings for the topic

Before start writing your articles, plan the outlines of the topic.

Write the topics and subheadings, you need to cover in that topic.

For example, we have published an article about writing SEO friendly blogs

seo friendly content screenshot

Before start writing, we created an outline, so that we can’t miss any subheadings.

blog topic outline - example screenshot

These will ensure that I have covered most of the headings relevant to that topic.

“People also ask” from search results

It is one of the pro tip, to increase your semantic SEO in the content. 

Whenever you search your topic in the search engine, it shows people also ask questions.

seo friendly urls- search page screenshot

see it how I added it to my website, through the post SEO-friendly URLs.

seo friendly urls answer - screenshot

These are some of the questions, that people often ask to google.

So, by adding the answers to these questions, you can also target keywords relevant to your content.

if you can able give answers, to the questions in Google, then you can also rank higher.

Target different keywords on the same page

In the initial days, people create different pages with a slight difference in the keyword.

For example – take two nearly similar keywords

When you search for these two keywords – “wp SEO plugins” and “SEO plugins for wp”

In the olden days, these are two different pages, that are completely optimized for those particular keywords.

Olden days, it worked better.

But, Google has updated its algorithms (hummingbird).

Now- a day, Google shows only the same results for two small changes keywords.

semantic seo writing example - search page screenshot

Two slightly different keywords were entered, but the search engine shows the same results. That’s why we insist you do semantic SEO.

Write longer content for blogs

Writing Longer content helps to improve the semantic SEO.

Is it really? How?

When writing longer content you can cover many headings related to that topic. 

Then writing many sub-headings, your related keywords will be automatically included.

This says google that, this blog post is completely about this particular topic.

And by having more content related to that topic, Google will love your page and accepts to rank higher in search engines.

The size and words of the article should depend on the topic you are choosing.

I am not insisting on you writing some fluff.

The words of the article will be from one thousand words to a few thousand words. And sometimes, it could be more longer (over ten thousand words).

But make sure that, you are writing quality articles. 

Buy writing unwanted stuff to make your content longer in your articles, the user experience will be damaged.

Your ranking will be lowered when you have a bad user experience. 

Google will consider more than 200 factors to rank your page in search engines.

That should be SEO optimized and use blogging tools to write effective content.

For example, A blog from our page blogging checklist for WordPress blogs

checklist webpage screenshot

It is 2700 words.

Are you thinking of it as longer content?

Probably, yes.

Because it has more information that every beginner blogger should know. So when any beginner blogger land on that page, he will find the content to be more useful.

Write longer quality articles fearlessly. Longer articles give more knowledge.

Use LSI keywords

Lsi keywords stand for the “latent semantic index”.

These keywords help Google to better understand your topic

Using LSI keywords your semantic SEO writing can be improved

Become a brand

The bigger your brand, you have the higher your advantage in semantic SEO.

When you are regularly giving quality content google will these into considerations.

Mostly, branded blog answers will be in the Google answer boxes. 

Because most of the time it will be correct.

  1. Write longer content articles
  2. Relationship with influencers
  3. Do personal branding (show authors face to the audience)
  4. Increase social signals

Some important factors that Google will consider, in showing your page in search engines is,

  1. Mobile or desktop – the mobile-friendly sites tend to appear higher in mobile devices. So make your site mobile friendly, rank in mobile searches.
  2. Location – some for choosing a location, user location also used by search engines. If you are looking for weather, in google, it initially shows the weather of your geo-location.
  3. Based on-site – if a user is regularly visiting your site, and their searching topic is available on your website, the search engine shows yours. This also could be an advantage.

Learn more about Google Hummingbird from MOZ

Conclusion

  Semantic SEO writing is one of the important things to make your content more visible to search engines like google. Whenever you are considering SEO, consider the semantic SEO and LSI keywords.

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