SEO in the age of the semantic web

AN INTRODUCTION TO ENTITIES

David Amerland

AS SEO PROFESSIONALS WE THOUGHT WE KNEW

HOW THE WEB WORKS …

We look beneath the fabric of the web and see the

code that runs it … the connections that form it.

SEO IN THE PAST HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT

PROBABILITIES

• Search returned statistically probable answers to keyword-laden search queries.

• To succeed in search, we needed to ‘load’ the dice. And we had a variety of techniques in our arsenal on how to do that exactly:

• Keywords, links, anchor text, on-page techniques, inbound links …

• If something did not work we needed to increase quantity, volume, intensity. It was always a case of having to dial things up.

BUT IN A SEMANTIC WEB STATISTICS FADE AWAY

The traditional “ten links in search”

Are changing, becoming:

Personalized

Populated by people with

familiar faces

More accurate

SEARCH ITSELF IS CHANGING:

• Mobile

• Voice

• Local

• Personal

• Conversational

• Predictive (Google Now)

• Functional (Google Maps)

• Infontational (YouTube)

Information is growing at an exponential rate and search is changing with it

Volume ● Velocity ● Variety ●Veracity all Big Data components play a key role

AND ENTITIES ARE THE NEW DRIVER:

Entities are generated relational mapping that uncovers the association between different data points.

This is RADICAL. Entities become trusted points around which other data revolves.

ENTITIES ARE PRODUCED IN A VARIETY OF WAYS:

• Imported from trusted sources (Wikipedia, Freebase, Metaweb)

• Extracted from web pages

• Data mining in the social web

• Sentiment mining

LET’S GET TECHNICAL:

ENTITIES ARE A CHALLENGE TO SEO BECAUSE:

• They provide answers at the search box rather than suggestions

OPTIMIZATION APPEARS TO BE REDUCED TO

ANSWERING A SEARCH QUERY

• But let’s look at it again:

THE ‘ENTITY’ THAT IS THE ANSWER TO THE

SEARCH QUERY “WHO IS THE PRESIDENT OF

THE UNITED STATES” PRODUCED:

• An answer

• A biography with associated links

• Recent posts with links

• Associated entities, complete with links

A ‘one’ answer result generated a much wider, related field of data than it might have been

possible before.

ENTITIES: THE CHALLENGE & THE OPPORTUNITY

• For SEOs the challengers are as steep as the question is simple:

• Changing search interface (screenless computers and keyless devices)

• Less reliance on keywords

• Deprecation of existing, on-page SEO techniques

• Loss of real estate space in SERPs

• Reduced reliance on statistical association in results

• How do you take advantage of Entities to make up for it all?

REVERSE ENGINEER ENTITY AS A DRIVER:

• Authority

• Trust

• Reputation

• Influence

• If that’s the end result how can it be reduced further into manageable steps?

• What actions can be taken at the content-creation interface that will produce these

outcomes, and how can this be ensured?

THINK:

• Volume

• Velocity

• Variety

• Veracity

ADD:

• Connection

• Social discovery

• Social Buzz

Authorship & ‘Author Rank’