Semantic Search and How It has Advanced The SEO

Semantic search came in 2013 with the release of Hummingbird update and created huge noise in the SEO industry. Semantic search was focused on the intent of the searchers queries with the goal to deliver more relevant results.

How does semantic search work?

Earlier Google used to find and show the result to the searcher based on the keyword interpretation, it used to count the no. of sequence for the keyword and word used in the context. But the introduction of semantic search brought a change to it as it was an attempt to provide most appropriate SERP results to the language of the Searchers, taking things ahead by not just considering the keywords but the context of the search query, even if it is expressed implicitly.

With the enable of voice search feature in the smartphone , the air was once again blown in the SEO community for “voice search” with the improved ability of Google to fully understand the searcher’s natural language Like “ where can I find the best hotel in Sydney”. But Google didn’t stop here, With Rankbrain update that work on Artificial intelligence(AI), it brought more advancement in understanding of the complex queries that searches uses today and in turn brought more sophistication to semantic searches.

What It Brought For Searchers As A Benefit:

Effective Search – We are able to find our answers even if we are not using right terminology, or not spelling our query in right words, Google will still give us right answer because of it’s intuitive search function. Search function used to be based on more specific search to give effective answers. So the problem was we were not able to get what we were looking for as a query.

Effective SERP results – Now Google as a search engine shows more results due to it has been loaded with high quality content due to this we get direct answers to our queries. This utility of semantic search and its faster growth encourages users and search use in more effective way on daily basis.

User friendly content encouragement – This semantic search has encouraged optimisers to get more effective content for users and spend more time in researching the content on topics which will eventually help search user to find their results.

What it brought for optimisers as a benefit:

Less focus on exact keywords – Exact keyword has always been very important part of content for optimisers to get focused on main keywords. Now as an optimizer we need to cover keywords with key phrases and synonyms that covers the meaning of keyword for search result and user understand it clearly as an answer to their query. There is no need for many pages with keywords based content rather there can be more informative content for user and search friendly which explains the meaning of term in simpler way.

User Perspective optimisation – content should be rightly optimized rather keywords based so need to spend more time in optimizing content for user perspective. So semantic content search has become harder in a way to track how keywords have been searched and predicted. Best is to spend more time and high efforts on user consumable content.

Synonyms Search Based Content – Now because of semantic search there is more flexibility in content due to synonyms and other wordings in content. Now we can even optimize our long tail phrases which give exact user search results.

Conclusion: In result with semantic search now SEO community is more focused on user friendly content rather keyword specific based. So content marketing strategy has improved content marketing and enhanced it to a level that now content is more important and gives clear message to users. We highly believe in content optimisation strategy as per semantic search and recommend to everyone!