What Are Semantically Related Keywords?
Semantically related keywords are words and phrases that are conceptually related to each other. The associations that exist between semantically related keywords strengthen the meaning of the primary keywords for SEO.
For example, a keyword such as “search engine marketing” would have semantically related keywords like organic search results, paid search advertising, and search engine results pages (SERPs).
The purpose of semantically related keywords is to link entities that are connected to each other to enhance the depth of information about a web page topic to help the search engine algorithms determine the correct indexing and rankings for relevant keywords. Semantically related keywords also allow search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to match the best web pages with search queries based on user intent.
Google introduced the use of semantic keywords with the Hummingbird algorithm update in 2013. As a semantic search engine, Google (and other platforms) can now understand the true intent behind users’ searches as opposed to just returning results based solely on keyword frequency.
Now, the ranking algorithm systems search for semantically related keywords in the content to help determine its relevancy to a search query. That is why some web pages can rank high in the SERPs without necessarily having the exact match keyword on the page.
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