When undertaking keyword research, an increasingly important aspect to consider is the semantic keyword. As the world wide web gets busier with both honest and fake news, products and services, search engines continually look for ways to provide the very best, relevant results; rewarding genuine, honest businesses and not for profit organisations, while giving the user a better match on what they’re really looking for.
Here lies the essence of what semanticism is about. Search engines are seeking to understand the context of your search beyond 2 or 3 words. Web users already search in questions but add to that search assistants on mobile phones and you can see how the search phrase gets longer and more specific. What you’re getting is more context. The search engine is asking – now what is it you’re really looking for?. For anyone interested in the semantic web beyond this article on keywords, there are plenty of sources, starting with semantic web project or web.3.
For the business owner, being aware of semantic keywords – what they are and how they help, is becoming key to keeping your website prominent in the results. In fact, semantic web results are already evident. Another term used to describe this new presentation of results is latent semantic indexing (LSI). The ‘People also ask’ boxes is evidence of longer more contextual queries, as is the autocue you find when you start to type in a query.
HOW DO YOU CREATE SEMANTIC KEYWORDS?
A good tool to start generating semantic keywords is the LSIGraph, which is designed for the job. Like any tool, don’t expect the golden bullet or eureka moment; there will likely be a few disappointing results in there and some downright odd ones but look hard because you’ll undoubtedly pick up a few gems.
ADDING STRUCTURE TO KEYWORD RESEARCH
Ultimately you’ll be using your semantic keywords in your content; writing the content around a new or known context. You can be more structured than this. You can split out your semantic keywords into different stages of the buyer’s journey, so searches at say the zero moment of truth (a phrase coined by Google and meaning that your business is not yet on their radar) will be different from when you’re actively being considered along with other competitors.
The nature of the buying journey is such that the original search may be general, casting the net. Whatever the nature of the purchase, the buying journey naturally results in a more informed and confident potential purchaser and the way they search as they get closer to a buying decision often results in more detailed queries, with the need for reviews, competitor comparisons. Think this through and organise your newly researched contextual key phrases into buying stages. Write content to appeal to all stages of your customer’s buying journey.
APPLY YOUR OWN THOUGHT AND LOGIC
Experience shows that any keyword research, once you’ve stripped out your own branded key phrases, often doesn’t leave a lot to go at (think about what you get in Google Console). This is why you need to apply thought and logic to key phase research first and not just rely on keyword tools. Brainstorm it and think in terms of context. This is the time to really get inside the minds of your potential customers.
This article on semantic keyword research is all part of Finkk’s philosophy of enabling a client to take on some of the learnable tasks that an agency would otherwise do if the client felt they had the time or inclination. Finkk Marketing’s blog post on ‘Can I do my own search engine optimisation?’ is still relevant – the 3 pillars discussed still apply. It’s the semantic element which is developing.
Written by Dawn on 02 Apr, 2019 - Comments Off on Keyword Research – Semantic Keywords