How To Be Semantically Smart

 

EAT - Experience, Authority, Trust

Google is the big search engine. Recently Google has changed the way it searches your content, especially on your web page. What worked last year does not serve you well now.

Your landing page is the base of how people and search engines perceive you and your business.

What's on you landing page?

You need breadth and depth in your content so you resonate with what your audience is looking for.

Show your experience through regular and consistent content.

Build your authority by referencing other authorities in your field. If you do this regularly search will begin to see you as an authority as well.

Your consistency in giving your audience a rich experience, with depth of content and links, and a consistent tone and message across all platforms will develop trust with your readers and with search. You create a double bonus for your brand.

It's not a Popular Keyword

As a business you need to trust the people who are actually looking for what you offer.

For the search to recognize you, content has to be deeper, more detailed, experience oriented. You need to offer a certain degree of expertise and a certain degree of authority.

As David Amerland said in an interview with Eric Enge and Mark Traphagen recently:

You just can't create 'content lite.'

The keywords have to occur naturally in the copy. This allows Google to ascertain the exact depth of the quality and expertise.

How to Put it to Work

Everything has to make sense in terms of activity, content, tone of voice  everywhere! This interconnection of presenting the same message and tone of voice is what constitutes being semantically smart. You need consistent content across the board - even without Google.

Your goal is to have your content connected but not compartmentalised. The aim is to give your visitors a fluid experience. No matter where they go to connect with you, they will have a similar feeling because of your tone and style. Consistency counts.

And...

Fluidity Counts for Google

Your consistency helps Google understand who you are...

  • your site
  • how you relate
  • what other people think about you

So, the more consistent you are online, the more you will be recognised.

Create a clear and consistent picture of who you are and what you do. Everywhere!

  • your tone on social media
  • your YouTube channel(s)
  • your podcasts
  • your website

Your voice and character have to be consistent. When all of these are consistent suddenly you have a distinct brand.

You have become you.

 

What about your business?

The same consistency applies for your business as well as your personal presence. Your brand is more than just an entity.

Your brand has a specific character and in the broad sense the brand needs to become more human.

What is the core value of your brand?

A brand stands for something very specific. Everyone in the business needs to reflect the same core values of the company whether there are two people or 150. Consistent tone and message is key to building your brand "character."

Everything has to be data dense.

How do you do that?

  • Have links to other things on your website
  • The link has to add value to your page, in other words, more of what the subject is about

But, not just a link for link’s sake that will count against you rather than no counting at all. The links are part of the consistent message.

All these things create a richer version just like they would in real life.

Hashtags Help

Share your content with specific hashtags. Use them repeatedly and consistently.

You can build brand identity by incorporating the human element into your hashtags and...

not just hash tags for the content but hashtags that are beginning to be associated with the nature of your brand.

Hashtags help integrate the core of your business content with the human side of doing business with your brand.

Make sure the hashtag fits with the content and the content fits with the hashtag. In this way you create a consistent message and.. you create a resource of human value.

The way search works now you want and need the human element within your message.

Apply the very human experience of connecting

The landing page job now is to convince them you are a real person with value.  It can’t just be 400 words anymore.

You need to think about the people who do need to hear about your topic. Constantly try to broaden your subject so you give a completeness of experience.

Break down your subject into chunks with a page for each subject. Have links to each page on your landing page. You create content with sub-subjects.

The more you have in place will send out all the semantic signals. You've created a semantically rich page that gives search more signals to find and to correlate.

Is It Work?

Yes, putting together your rich content and linking to sub-subjects takes time and thought. The results are worth every minute. You visitors have a greater sense of you and your business. And search engines recognize your experience and authority. You have created a place where both visitors and search engines trust you and your business.

by Zara Altair

Communicate! Framing Authority and Trust

Measure Your Market. Analytics You Can Do.