According to WeAreKinetica, semantic SEO is a highly efficient methodology for creating content that ranks well in search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. It’s perhaps also the least understood.
In a Facebook group, someone asked “What is semantic SEO?” and “What is Koray Tuğberk Gübür’s framework?” (For context, Koray Tuğberk Gübür is a Turkish SEO-consultat that has popularized semantic SEO to the mainstream SEO-industry.)
Someone posted a reply from ChatGPT, and it got the most likes. The reply was nonsensical. Chatbots are making people dumber.
The following is nonsense because it does not say anything concrete. Everything is up to interpretation.
This is semantic SEO
Semantic SEO is about using linguistics and linguistical structures to create more meaningful, logically sound, and informationally rich content.
Semantics is a real science, the “study of meaning”. A part of linguistics. Semantic SEO is the process of doing SEO from the perspective of semantics.
A way to think of it is that instead of sentences, you are publishing data, where sentences, paragraphs etc act as data containers (like a database). (I will explain more later in this article.)
By using language correctly, you are creating a statement, asserting a perspective, serving an intent. The result is semantically sharp, and logically traceable.
The language shows a chain of thought, that is rich in facts. Each link in the chain of thought is enriched with examples and facts. The idea is to make it “indisputable”.
That’s how you win an argument, and that’s how you make Google love your site.
Vagueness is the opposite of semantic SEO
The opposite to semantic SEO is the comment in the screenshot above. It include statements such as:
“Creating clusters of related content to demonstrate expertise and depth in a subject area. Interlinking these pieces strategically to build a content network that signals authority.”
There’s almost no concrete, actionable information, just insinuations that nobody cares to actually define.
Semantics is a real science
Semantics is nothing new, it is considered to be a distinctive field of study since 1897 when the term was used in the scientific paper Essai de sémantique by Michel Bréal, a French linguist.
Koray Tuğberk Gübür took it upon himself to write about his SEO clients as case studies, and in doing so, managed to popularize semantic SEO. Before him, there was Bill Slawski and his blog Seo by the Sea.
Koray has been and is still strongly questioned, and even dismissed by SEO-marketers that stick to methodologies of “classical SEO”, often stating that they “don’t believe in semantic SEO”.
Semantic SEO is not a matter of opinion. Semantics is a real science. The same cannot be said about untested opinions that many SEO-marketers are eager to assert.
Koray’s Framework
Mr Gübür went on to combine semantic SEO with other ideas and best practices to create a “holistic approach” to SEO, meaning: not only semantics, not only technical SEO, not only anything, but rather a multi-faceted approach. (Koray, you are welcome to correct me if I am wrong about your methodology.)
Semantic SEO is based on science
The advantage of semantic SEO (with or without Koray’s holistic approach) is that you have a science based foundation for doing SEO, instead of chasing whatever new fad [insert name of any “guru”] might work right now. (Most gurus just linkbuild at scale, and then try to sell you “courses”.)
Using semantics, it is possible to calculate the similarity between two sentences based on their meaning. For example, the sentences “The cat is on the mat” and “A feline is sitting on the rug” might have a semantic similarity score of 0.85 on a scale from 0 to 1, indicating high similarity despite using different words.
Additionally, semantics can be used to calculate word importance in a text, such as in a sentence: “The stock market rose by 5% today.” The term “5%” could be identified as a numerical feature, weighted higher for financial context analysis.
Google does such calculations.
Semantic SEO is generally not understood
Unfortunately, many that explain what semantic SEO is does not understand it. They just repeat a definition they read somewhere. A common definition quoted is that “semantic SEO focuses on intent, not on keywords.” That, in itself, is correct, but what does that actually mean?
It’s ironic that the science that is semantics, that aim to understand meaning in language, is itself not understood.
It’s the same problem exists with SEO EEAT. SEO-marketers and agencies just repeat Google’s statements, without understanding what it means.
One of the reason I went into semantic SEO is because nobody could explain to me that EEAT is. Everyone could echo Google’s statements, and everyone understood the words used, but nobody could explain it in a MEANINGFUL and ACTIONABLE way.
This is why people discuss and theorize about EEAT so much. The same thing is happening with semantic SEO. The definition of semantic SEO is long, as it includes many aspects of language, data interpretation, and data structures.
People love to talk about EEAT and semantic SEO, but unable to perform what the definitions assert.
95% of SEOs don’t understand what semantic SEO is
My estimate is that 95% of discussions about semantic SEO is discussed on same level as yoga teachers are discussing surgery. I make this assesemnt basedon the fact that I know of only 3 other people than myself that is able to constructively explain what semantic SEO is.
How to create semantically valid content
Semantic SEO requires you to create content that is precise, with specific data, and lots of examples. Each word, phrase and sentence aim to improve the comprehension, and add data. Any data presented, must be backup with verifiable data. (This can be external sources, or references to other sentences, paragraph, articles or even websites).
- Example of semantically bad text: “SoftwareX is the best 3D-software for beginners.” is not a fact.
- Example of semantically better text, that the previous version: “SoftwareX runs in the browser, without the need of installing additional apps. This makes us a great option for beginners, and its an attribute that our users praise.”
Both examples above assert similar thing, but the latter presents a sharper contexts and definition of “good”, instead of an empty claim.
Semantics play a central role in law
Other real world examples include how laws are written, or how lawyers present a case in a trial where their job is to showcase all the facts and remove any doubt about the conclusion they are making. If your statement (or articles) are not precise, your case hold no credibility and you’ll lose.
Content writers fail at writing according to semantic SEO
Most content writers have no idea about how to write in this style. Instead, often, SEOs will assert that “you need to humanize the text”, which is the worst advice!
They also don’t know how to identify the issues, resulting in them not knowing when a text is bad.
SEOs, obviously, want good results so I would say that they most often mean well, but they don’t understand this anyway.
Experts will naturally stick to facts, clarifications and examples, while SEO-content writers will push out tons of words. One of the reasons text by experts rank is because they’ve learnt how to explain things to novices using very rudimentary facts.
The semantic SEO structures are made intra-page (within an article, paragraph, sentence, phrase), intra-site (interlinking, self-referencing), and inter-site (refer to external sources; including sites, authors, and more).
Google likes clarity, sharpness, and order
Google does not fill in the blanks. It looks for complete, easy to interpret information. Google likes clarity, sharpness, and order. It does not like vagueness and hearsay.
The same way you’d like that a plane ticket says “Boarding starts 18:05, at Gate 5A. A valid passport, with at least 6 months validity, is required.” instead of “Boarding start in the afternoon, bring personal documents.” The first is semantically sharp, with precise data. The latter is unusable rhetoric.