SEO is becoming more and more difficult each year. Every content is fighting for better rankings in organic search results. So, what should you do for your content to stand out? The secret is focusing on semantic SEO.

So, what’s semantic SEO?

This is the process of adding more meaning to the words that you use when creating your content. That means, optimizing the words for the true user-intent, not answering a simple search query. Sematic SEO means answering the first question and then answering the second, or third question immediately.

By doing that, you give your content more depth and value. One thing about Google is that it directs searchers to web pages where they can find what they are looking for.

What does semantic SEO lead to?

• More opportunities to get a variety of keyword rankings
• A chance for your content or page to rank for a longer period

Although keyword ranking cannot be sustainable for long, web traffic can be. Google’s algorithm keeps on reminding us what they look for when matching search results to queries. So, what you need to do is to look for information that Google provides for free. You can use that information to generate and deliver more relevant and valuable content.

Writing content using semantic SEO

Semantic SEO consists of trying to determine the deeper meaning of why a person is searching for content and then placing those elements strategically within your content. You can determine these building blocks so that you can create your content using the hints provided by Google within the search engine results pages.

Both the “people also ask” and “related search” sections on Googles are the best places for you to find such information. The deeper meaning of search queries will assist in ranking your site, and also maintain the never-ending organic search fluctuations.

What you need to ask yourself is: after the user learns after answering their search query, what other questions will arise from that? You should then continue answering these new questions on the same post.

Here, the search algorithm also tries to anticipate the next search query, and thinking like a search engine can assist you to understand what you should do next.

Start with the traditional keyword research methods

Here, you can use any keyword research tool, like Google Keyword Planner, and then choose a topic that’s relevant to your website or business to work creating content.

For example, an electrician provides residential plumbing services. A major part of his job includes installing and servicing electrical systems in both old and new homes. That means you will need to create your post based on the concept of electrical systems.

The keyword process will look like this:

• Broad term – electrical services
• Expanded term – residential electrical services (service offered)

Now, when you decide to create your content based on the topic of residential electrical services, then you will need to determine how you can create the content, and make sure that you keep semantic SEO in mind.

Here are some questions that you need to ask yourself:

• What kind of problem are you addressing?
• How will your content solve that problem?
• When you solve the problem, how will you address any additional problems the user might have after getting the first answer?

Extracting semantic information from Google

First, you need to search “residential electrical services” on Google. What kind of information do you get? Now, use the information on Google’s search engine result pages to create a foundation for your post. Begin from the bottom section by using the “searches related to” part.

Using that information, you can easily make an assumption about the customer intent. Putting all these assumptions together assists you in creating the foundation of high-value and informative content. Next, you will need to create an attractive headline, and then make sure that you include these assumptions within your content.

Semantic SEO can assist you to appear in featured snippets

Using search engine results to create your content is beneficial as it will guide you when creating your content. In fact, it can assist you to appear above the first position.

Both featured snippets and “People also ask” sections are not new to search engine results pages. These two sections are very interesting as they are part of Google’s new concept—position zero. Even though it’s always a good thing to rank in the first position in organic search, it’s far much better to rank above number one.

With this, most users don’t even bother to scroll down to see what’s ranking in the first position.

What value does semantic SEO add to your content?

To make you understand better, we need to revisit what we said about using the search engine results pages to your advantage when writing content. Now, when you click on the blue links in the related searches section, they will give you an entirely different search engine results page.

However, every search engine results page maintains the same valuable answer. And why is this? Each page in the featured snippet section has depth, which addresses different sections of common related search queries.

Even though it’s possible for the post to lose its keyword rankings for any of these search queries, it can still maintain a valuable amount of its organic traffic at the end of the day. Although it’s not possible to control whether your content ranks for your targeted keyword, you can plan to bombard the search engine results pages with a number of keyword targets.

Bottom Line

Providing value, creating relevancy, as well as thinking about the new problems that your client will experience is the only thing that will separate your content from all the others—and this is bound to happen for a long period of time. So, the best thing here is to be the most valuable and relevant answer.