Semantically connected keywords in your SEO strategy

A common tactic employed by us for SEO is to tailor content on-page for keyword targeting. This is where the content of the website includes the keywords or phrases that you want to rank highly for. The process of identifying what people search for and targeting those terms in your content.

What this article explores is a slightly left-field and experimental tactic of using semantically connected keywords in your SEO to try and make specific pages more relevant.

To do this we find the top 10 results that Google has for your important keyword and then to identify the words and phrases used more frequently across these results which relates to this keyword.

For example, you could be targeting the word "live in care". This is an important keyword for the website and it's something that we want to rank for. We understand that if we rank highly, then we are doing well and our target audience are able to find us easily. This is keyword targeting.

But what do the top 10 results tell us about commonly used terms and phrases that are semantically connected to the keyword we are targeting but that give the pages a better chance to be perceived by both Google and people that search for "live in care" as more relevant, comprehensive and higher quality - resulting in improved rankings.

 So in the example of "live in care" semantically connected keywords that feature in the top 10 results could be;

  • lifestyle
  • comfort
  • older people / elderly
  • nursing
  • own home
  • help

So to boost your ranking potential for "live in care" you could use these topics, concepts, words and phrases that Google probably want to include, and that searchers probably also want to have covered. Using these words on page can help to make it more relevant, more comprehensive, potentially more useful and higher quality.

Not all semantically connected keywords are good to target, so it's important to use SEO knowledge and judgements on volume/difficulty/opportunity metrics to discover the right ones.

You can use also this technique to expand keyword research rather than using tools such as Keyword Planner.

We're experimenting with this, would encourage you to give this a try in your own SEO and content marketing strategies, and have seen some good and promising results.

If you need help with your marketing or SEO in Sussex then get in touch for a chat today.