What Is Semantic Search And How Does It Impact SEO

The word “Semantic” refers to “Meaning”. Semantic Search is technically defined as the searching algorithm used by search engines to improve the accuracy of the search engines by understanding the intent of the searcher and contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable database to generate more relevant results either on web or in a closed system.

In simple terms semantic search is a technology which is used by search engines to know what the user is searching for taking into account the words the user is entering into the search bar and then efficiently providing the relevant results based on those words. Search engine deduces the meaning of the words entered into the search bar and then returns the most relevant results. In short it is like asking a question and getting an answer from the search engine.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is all about optimizing the website to get huge web traffic and get higher rankings on the search engine results. The search engine rankings represent how frequently a particular website is being visited and how much web traffic it is accumulating over time. A website with huge web traffic scores better on the search engine rankings and is listed with higher priority in the search engine results.

Search engine optimization is all about determining and identifying the keywords which are used most of the times by people in real world and then creating the content centralized around those words. In simple terms it is a process of determining what the people in the real world are looking for and then creating content based on this.

Impact of Semantic Search on SEO

The use of semantic search deeply impacts the SEO and in turn, the ranking of websites on the search engine. This impact can be understood with the help of following concepts.

Higher Click through Rate:

Click through rate, technically, is the number of times your ad is clicked divided by the number of times your ad is shown in the search engine results. Generally, click-through rate is the representation of how the users behaves to your I.e. they find your ad relevant or not to their queries.

Click through rates are higher when your ad is clicked more number of times as compared to number of times it is shown in the search engine results. Higher click-through rate is beneficial to the website and boosts the traffic on the website as well as the ranking on search engine.

Higher Quality Score

When the number of users visiting your website increase drastically depending on the semantic keywords around which your content is set then it is most likely that search engines will be listing your website with higher priority.

This is because when the web traffic increases depending on the search keywords then the site they are frequently visiting is considered to contain good quality content and such site earn good ranking on the search engine results and will be included in the results more frequently than before.

Apart from SEO benefits, Semantic search helps with AdWords cost. Let’s find out more about it:

Lower Minimum Bids

You have to pay a certain amount of money on per word basis for search engine to include your ad (Google AdWords) in the search engine results. Minimum bid is the amount you have to pay every time your ad is displayed. If your ad is drawing good web traffic based on the relevancy of semantically related keywords and also the quality of the content then the minimum bid amount is reduced.

If your ad contains more words to display the relevant information then you have to pay more. When the quality of the keyword increases then you can reduce the number of words in your ad which will be capable of drawing more web traffic then it was drawing previously. So lower minimum bid is all about earning more through lower investment.