To get solid ranking points, the significance of technical SEO is more than ever and yet to achieve long-term success with Google, the key factor is to understand exactly how Google Processes data.

With the rise of Google algorithms and especially semantic search, the questions on most related people’s minds are:

• Does technical SEO still matter?
• Will writing a lot of content for your website and pages drive lots of traffic?
• Is it even worth going through a keyword research?

These are some of the questions plaguing the search community on the web or during personal discussions. Of course we are in an age where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is said to be dead and “content is King” is a phrase that is growing nearly on everyone, yet it is still significant to take care of SEO and technical SEO to be more precise as most things revolve around it and you just can’t build a house without solidifying its foundations right?

Google has evolved a great deal and have changed their ways of understanding and delivering results and yet it is absolutely illogical to say that technical SEO is not relevant anymore. Semantic search and AI (Artificial Intelligence) triumph but still need SEO to guide them deliver better results for the end users.

Google Hummingbird Update

Semantic search was introduced to us with the quite rollout of the Google’s Hummingbird update back in 2013. This is when the fundamental way Google used to deliver results got shifted and made this stand out as a major algorithm update rather than a simple tiny one. This was when Google made use of the 15+ years of data collection and user analysis, testing and tweaking it with the aim of delivering a better experience for the users. Blind guesses about each other’s keywords to create relevant connections was a thing of the past from this point onwards for both content creators and users alike.

Semantic search was brought in with the purpose of leveraging heaps of data collected by Google and use it to deliver contextually appropriate results and answers to search queries and questions everyone would ask in searches. The three core elements that meant much more for this shift and made it a rather unique one are:

• Instead of focusing just on a few keywords, Hummingbird takes the whole query into account and delivers results accordingly.
• Also, it now considers users, their search patterns, history and a whole collection of other relevant variables when delivering results.
• Other significant factors under considerations are device type the user is searching on, time of day and location.

Semantic search helped Google deliver the right results in the fastest time possible and provided the opportunity for a relational connection to be created by delivering contextualized content. It is fair to say the semantic search brought in by the Hummingbird update has had a significant impact on the way search results were delivered and subsequently on SEO as well.

The Impact on SEO

There might have been a significant shift in the way results got delivered after the aforementioned update, however the basics of SEO remained pretty much the same. Links still get your significant ranking points, keywords are still important and on-page optimization is still necessary. When a major change is incorporated, it is often easy to sport what has changed but one area semantic search has gotten right is that it has limited the not so ethical ranking tactics by promoting the rather ethical ones more and cutting down on ones who used the supposed bypasses.

It is easy to get the meaning of the word “semantics” mixed with its linguistic meaning but that interpretation is not exactly accurate when it comes to Google and their deliverance of results. Of course, content plays a major role but there are plenty other factors that play major roles as well on your site that are equally read and indexed by crawlers. This is one of the major misconceptions of marketers and site owners alike, many of them think that by writing more and more content and linking it to their site, they can get ranked and found. Unfortunately that is just not the case anymore and unless you get other relevant things right, even content will not matter all that much.

Google shifted from “strings to things” with semantic search meaning they aim to connect naturally but there is a catch: No matter how sophisticated it has gotten, the algorithm just cannot develop meaning and understanding on its own. One of the biggest problems with SEO in the modern day is that people usually assume that the algorithm somehow knows more than they do forgetting the fact that it is still just an algorithm and not an actual human being. It will still require structured data to learn just like any other data-driven program or even artificial intelligence.

Mixing terms like artificial intelligence and machine learning with something self-educating or even robots that can find information on their own like us humans is an easy mistake, however, this is just not how semantic search, RankBrain or any other feature of the algorithm works. Education and input from some channel will still be required by it to grow, learn and become intelligent.

Optimizing your sites higher in the biggest search engine that is Google requires at least the basic knowledge of data entities. These are basically any person(s), place or a thing that can be represented by data or a data classification linking to any other data classification in relationships. These entities provide Google with understanding about how information and concepts fit together. Google analyzes the “person, people or thing” a site is about when indexing it and draws connections to related content or entities enabling them to acquire meaning. When making sense of your site and content, Google compares entities found on it with each other and also compares your site with reliable and authoritative sites on the web having similar entities.

Technical SEO and How It Helps

Even today, in the modern world of semantic search, technical SEO can still help your site in many ways, including:

• Titles and Meta: The title is one of the first things crawled on a web page. When you provide a clear and concise title, crawler can understand your page’s content in a much better way. This is where the right tone gets set and entity relationship also kicks off right here. Although Meta Descriptions are not part of the ranking algorithm, however, with semantic search, these have become more significant. Your website’s Meta is read and indexed by crawlers just as much as other significant factors. Not only can good descriptions boost your click-through rates but can also provide a brief overview of the overall crawled page. When trying to understand the context of your page, search engines like Google take this data into account. Technical SEO almost all the times starts off with titles and Meta descriptions and when you have a high quality technical SEO Company working for you, chances are your site will do great.
• Site Structure: If you know anything about SEO and how search engines like Google treat sites, you should be pretty familiar with the fact that site structure and the logical arrangement of it is of much significance. It helps users find what they are looking for on your website much more efficiently and at the same time it also helps crawlers understand the connectivity of your content overall. Developing a well-organized site structure might take a bit of time and effort but it will be all worth it when you eventually have it done and rank much higher in searches. It will help your site get indexed fully and will also make search engines understand it and all the content on it in a much more efficient way. Site structure is another factor that is made much better by quality SEO Providers. Experts know how and where each section of data should go and guide you to the right direction with how to organize your structure.
• Structured Data: Is metadata implemented to help search engines understand content and context better. Schema is one of the most efficient and common ways of structuring your site data. Semantic search is all about how well you have implemented structured data and everything related to indexing entities is built around your structured data and schema. If you want to do well in the era of semantic search, structuring your data is of great significance and is another of the factors that can be improved with technical SEO. High quality SEO Experts guide you on how to structure your data for both your audiences and search engines alike.

Verdict

Many people in the technical community believe that more and improved content is all that matters for semantic search, however, that is just not how it works. No doubt content is important but technical SEO tells you how to develop content according to your site’s requirements and thus with the rise of semantic search, technical SEO has become all that more important as well. Digital marketers, SEO experts and site owners all should spend the necessary time and effort to understand exactly how Google processes data and look for more efficient ways to make search engines understand your site’s content and why it can be of advantage to you.

The best thing about getting your technical SEO right is that it will help you get the best out of semantic searches and will benefit you for years to come.