With the latest release of Google’s ‘Penguin’ algorithm change – that tries to slash web spam detected via numerous avenues involving keyword stuffing and low value backlinks– deploying correct keyword optimization around your sites is going to become more crucial than ever.
Now, as I state ‘correct keyword optimization,’ I do not mean, ‘choose one target keyword then cram it inside your Internet content as many times as possible.’ This ship has sailed.
Rather, as we move to the future of algorithm improvements as well as advanced spam detection, it’ll be even more vital that you approach keyword research within a holistic way. To do this, we have to realize the semantic nature of search engines’ index behaviors.
‘Semantics’ will refer to the interpretation or meaning of a phrase or word.
Take the term ‘fan,’ for instance. If you typed in this one word inside Google’s search bar, how would the Google know whether you are searching for customer reviews of the most recent box fans in the marketplace, career data for your favorite celebrity or an additional piece of data associated with one of the several probable uses of the term ‘fan’?
If you type in the terms, ‘industrial fan reviews,’ inside Google, the search engine will not only come back with results which involve this certain phrase. If Google stuck this closely to the text users entered inside the search bar, it would oftentimes wind up showing either bad quality results – or none whatsoever. Rather, Google and the additional search engines utilize their semantic indexing abilities to pull results from associated SERPs they think are substantially associated.
In the instance of our ‘industrial fan reviews’ sample, Google also might come back with results integrating the words ‘industrial fan comparison,’ and ‘industrial fan guide’ or the words ‘commercial fan review’ – amongst other ones. As you may expect, to raise the likelihood that our website is displayed in the SERPs for our primary keyword, it’ll be to our advantage to integrate these associated words, too– providing the search engine spiders an improved grasp upon what our content is associated with and how it ought to be both displayed and indexed.
Therefore, to take advantage of the Googles’ semantic index behaviors, we initially must come up with a listing of semantic keywords. Here is how we do it…
Tip 1 – Assemble ‘Level 1’ Core Keywords List
The initial measure in generating a great listing of semantic keywords includes building a listing of closely-associated phrases – we will refer to as our ‘Level 1’ core keywords. These keywords will represent variations upon our targeted phrase which doesn’t stray too far away from its original meaning.
One simple way of doing this includes using the search engine’s ‘Related Searches’ feature. In order to perform this, navigate to Google.com, type in your targeted keyword phrase in the search bar then finish the search. Once the results have shown, choose ‘Related searches’ from the left sidebar to show a choice of associated keyword phrases.
