Meri Garcia's List: Linguistics and SEO

"Its important to remember that a website is only as good as its content, and a websites content is only as good as the author who wrote it. But how does websites semantics play a key role in search engine optimisation and usability? Easily, good websites work well with a majority of users; therefore a poorly built website will typically have a higher bounce rate along with poorer SEO performance.


Semantics will typically involve the placement and layout of a website, in conjunction with content placement. When building a website, good semantics make all the difference, especially when it comes to visitor retention levels.

For example, when you look at a newspaper, you will always see a large bold headline, a picture affiliated with that headline and then a teaser for the headline, which works incredibly well. This structure is becoming more popular within today’s websites, since its becoming more vital to capture users attention within seconds of them visiting. Remember, if a user comes to buy an apple, the first thing they will expect to see is an apple.

Good semantics have an impact on search engine optimisation, purely because of the fact that good semantics allow for better placement and utilisation of body emphasis elements such as header tags, content and content emphasis attributes.

Also, the websites interconnecting pages can be better placed, encouraging a good step through platform will allow users to find more information, so for example, if a user goes from the homepage to a car parts page, the idea from this point would be to list manufacturers to lead the user through the selection process.
Website semantics can also be referred to as latent semantic indexing or LSI for short which means pretty much the same thing, although LSI is designed to identify key attributes for improving a websites semantic structure.

Search engine optimisation is not directly affected by LSI; however, good website structure does affect SEO directly. If search engines can understand the websites ability to convey rel

"The advent of blended search in 2007 forced SEOs to rapidly reevaluate their strategies. Blended search, which incorporates video, images, news and other result categories into general Web search results, meant that along with keyword-rich content, engagement objects represented an additional opportunity for SERP real estate.

woodland stream and sunlight

Another potential game changer, semantic search has been buzzed about for a long time already, and with big boy Google beginning to implement some semantic technology, it looks like semantic search could be making its move to the mainstream. So is it time to rethink SEO strategy again, this time for semantic search?

Yesterday I wrote about Ask.com and their progressive search technology, including impressive strides in semantic search. One commenter, Phill Midwinter (aka SEO Phill), brought up the implications semantic search could have on the search engine optimization community:

What I find odd is that despite the improvements taking place with semantic search technology, the majority of SEOs still insist on using a keyword strategy that doesn’t take semantics into account.

ASK is doing some great work and has been innovating steadily for some years now – but the recent slew of semantic improvements from Google are also being taken at face value and strategy isn’t changing.

You only need to look at the recent PageRank sculpting fiasco [...] to see that SEOs are losing touch instead of keeping up.

Well isn’t that a frightening prediction. I decided that a semantic search SEO strategy was worth a deeper look, so I pinged Phill to find out more. And omgosh, I had a lot to learn.

Where’s Semantic Search Today?

First some background. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) uses statistical algorithms to figure out what Web content is about based on the words used and their relationships with other words on the page. By comparing all the words and they way they’re used, LSA can figure out what a page is actually about and base result rankings on that

"Maslow 2.0 – A New Hierarchy of Needs for Collaboration

By Dan Bevarly January 14th, 2009
Pyramids
Source: National Geographic Kids
You Can’t Engage if You Can’t Connect

I have heard government officials and agency work teams say they have a hard time connecting online with their constituents. Mainly, their intent is to inform and encourage citizen participation in their planning or policy making.

This gap is also noted in the private sector between companies and customers who also wish to enhance their relationship through collaboration on the Web. In both cases, my first response is “you can’t engage if you can’t connect.”

That’s a basic (and obvious) requirement. However, you would be surprised, or not, at just how hard it is to make that connection. You probably have a personal experience where you tried to contact a public official, or thought maybe you had, but not sure that your feedback had disappeared in cyberspace when there was no response. Customers who want to comment on a particular brand, or question a company policy may not find a place to do so on their Web site so they seek alternative methods.

Thinking about this very basic requirement for communication between two or more parties gave me an idea about how our process to connect with, communicate to, and collaborate with others is a process that can be broken down into increments, or levels. Then, there is also the intent behind that dialog that also weighs into this process.


Abraham Maslow’s Theory and Hierarchy

That thought made me reflect on my college days when I was introduced to the famous Hierarchy of Needs proposed by Dr. Abraham Maslow in his theory of human motivation. Taking that pyramid diagram (and with apologies to Dr. Maslow), could I use its premises to advance a Hierarchy of Needs for Web 2.0? Hmmmm.

With thanks to, and quoting from, Wikipedia, “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is predetermined in order of importance. It is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels; the first lower level is be