6 December 2015

Sorting out your keyword levels

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Semantics describes the interpretation of a phrase or word, and it’s important for you to begin with keyword research to know how Google will interpret your keywords when it crawls your site. The best approach is to organise your keywords into three levels and take a holistic view to create a list that factors in the variations that naturally occur in user intent.

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The first level is your core, which contains keywords that are closely matched to your initial targets. These should include close target variations that are very similar in meaning so Google will consider your site for searches of those core keywords.

Level 2 refers to thematic keywords that are only related by concept. Level 3 involves stem words, which are terms that answer search questions by anticipating user information needs. Your content should incorporate all three levels.

Integrate your social media

A digital agency that specialises in web design in Cheltenham can help you to integrate your social media channels. These are a key part of the Hummingbird release’s personalised presentation of search results, and companies such as www.ma-design.biz/ can help. Social searches are likely to become increasingly important to your rankings, with social media playing a more critical role in search results. Make sure that you create content that responds to the needs and interests of your social audience.

Data structuring

Structured data is required to make semantic search data work. Make sure all of the content on your site is marked up, organised and tagged appropriately to facilitate crawling. An agency specialising in SEO and web design in Cheltenham can be your strategic partner in this aim.

Develop a strong content plan

This is a vital part of good SEO and not simply a Hummingbird addition. However, Hummingbird looks closely at user intent to ensure that it ranks pages that offer relevant, optimised content.

This means that keyword stuffing is less desirable then ever. With semantic search optimisation, keywords must be carefully placed and integrated into content in an organic way without being overused. Develop content that answers your users’ queries, and define which keywords will become targets for specific pages. You should also outline how the planned content for each of your website pages will answer user needs. From this point, the content itself needs to be strong and relate directly to the page’s delegated keywords.