Search engine optimisation has moved on somewhat since the ‘golden age of keyword usage, where a few keywords in your meta tags would work wonders. Now though, the golden age is long gone. If you’re working with on-page SEO / on-site SEO you now need to ensure your website targets a range of semantically related keywords across a range of ranking factors to promote a deeper level of relevancy to the search engines.
Best practice keyword usage now includes keyword research that considers the use of related terms and phrases, and considers how these terms are organised on the page that is being optimised, across related pages, the domain level and within the sites’ online neighbourhood.
So why are semantically-related keywords important?
Terms that are associated with each other promote meaning to search engines, far more than the repeated use of a single keyword, thus highlighting the increasing sophistication of search engines and their understanding of linguistics.
Semantic Keywords and a Cat Shop
Let’s say that you own a cat shop, and if you don’t already, you really (probably) should. As an example, you can see that around the term ‘cats’, using various modifying terms and phrases, you can create a wide variety of meaning and that stems from just one word. Now, imagine if you’re a search engine looking at a large number of words in a large number of places…the meaning that they can generate at a macro level is phenomenal.
With this in mind, it’s all the more important to try and build a range of keywords into your content that draw the kind of visitors that you wish to receive…i.e. the one’s that are most likely to shop for cat products.
So you may of course wish to target ‘cat shop’, but instead of using repeated instances of ‘cat shop’, you might also likely to use ‘cat products’, ‘cat food’, ‘cat retailer’ and specific cat products that you sell with modifying terms such as ‘buy’, ‘sell’, ‘cheap’, ‘price’, ‘for sale’. That way, you are helping teach search engines that you are indeed a shop and that you do sell items for cats. Simple.
Key phrases and key meaning
Taking the example above, these keywords and modifiers tie quite nicely into phrases, and this makes for excellent SEO copy.
Phrase-based keyword usage can therefore be far more effective, as it uses the keyword in question but with a mixture of modifiers and synonyms. This approach to keyword usage can potentially capture both long-tail and short-tail traffic, whilst promoting a great deal of relevancy and coherency to the copy.
Quick Tip: It’s often worthwhile mapping out the keywords that you wish to target; brainstorming and running a few queries through a few keyword research tools for more ideas (it’s easy to fall into the trap that you think everyone else uses the same queries in search engines as you might).
Organising Keywords for SEO
The consideration and use of keywords in link structures, content structures and file structures in each instance communicate something to search engines. It’s for this reason why we have to be mindful of site-wide ramifications of keyword usage for key meaning.
3 Quick Tips: Group related content into folders, link between related pages using relevant anchor text within relevant paragraphs, and organise the keyword-rich content clearly using relevant headings…but you’ll have to bookmark the site and return later for more information on those!
How have I done?
I set myself the challenge of writing this semantically relevant article on keywords and meaning around their usage, using a range of keywords without appearing to damage the copy…could you tell? Copy for SEO needn’t be spammers copy anymore!
