seo
What is Semantic SEO?
Published: 09/09/25 - Updated: 09/09/25
What is Semantic SEO?
When Google was first created, in order to best understand user’s queries and serve back relevant information, keywords were vital in summarising searches into the basic core information. As a result, the way in which users searched and content was created changed, and as a result we’ve all been conditioned to search and optimise specifically for keywords rather than search phrases or prompts, as historically that provided better results. However, over time, as LLMs (large language models) and NLP (natural language processing) have become more advanced, the systems behind search have become better at understanding the wider context of search phrases, improving results over time.
We’re now at a point where Google is no longer looking solely for keywords within text to understand context and relevance, but instead is able to get a much better understanding from the content as a whole. This means that with much more data available Google has become more discerning about what content it serves and has prompted a shift away from traditional keyword targeting to semantic SEO.
In essence, semantic SEO is this approach to optimisation, rather than focussing on keyword targeting, it’s about understanding the meaning and context behind the search providing good, helpful content that fully answers and addresses the users query.
Keyword Targeting VS Semantic SEO
Whilst keywords are still important to understanding the relevance of a page and its content, it’s no longer the only factor. User experience, matching search intent and providing detailed answers to users searches goes far beyond traditional keyword targeting.
What makes up Semantic SEO
At its core, semantic SEO is made up of a number of main principles:
- Topical Entities – how relevant the content/ page is to a specific topic. These entities are based on the topical association of the content
- Topic Clusters – these clusters are essentially how well linked various entities are. You want to have all content on a similar topic interlinked to ensure that the relevance of that page in relation to others in the cluster is maximised. This also allows Google a better understanding of how different content is related to each other, so it knows what content is best to serve to its users. The more relevant content you have on a topic, the stronger the association to that topic cluster, and your authority within it
- User intent – does the content actually serve the same intent that the user is looking for? E.g. commercial, informational, navigational.
Benefits
If you’re able to leverage semantic SEO there are a number of benefits. Google has moved towards rewarding helpful content as part of their content guidelines and semantic SEO falls directly into this approach.
As a result google will have a better understanding of the context of the whole content, which will now see you ranking better than with previous keyword targeting approaches.
One of the secondary benefits to semantic SEO is as content is written more naturally, its more closely aligned with conversational search that is common with voice and AI/LLM search, where users are searching for much more longertail multi worded prompts. With the growth within LLM search, this is a natural benefit.
How to build out Semantic SEO
In order to build out and optimise your site for semantic search, the first thing to do is outline your topic clusters:
- Identify what topic clusters are critical for your business and are at the core of what you do
- With this list of topic clusters you can then map out where you have content that fits within these topics, and where you have content gaps
- With content gaps identified you can start building out a content calendar to target and create content to fill the niche
- Alongside this, you can look to optimise any existing content to provide more helpful content to your users. This could be frequently asked questions, customer testimonials, supporting imagery, data or infographics. As part of this it is vital to consider the search intent behind the terms you are optimising for. Have a look at the current top ranking competitors to get an understanding of what type of content Google thinks is most appropriate for the user and match this intent.
- Internally link between all related content to further improve content relevance
- EEAT – signals that your content isn’t just keyword-focused, but genuinely credible and valuable
Semantic SEO isn’t a different approach to keyword targeting, more an evolution, moving inline with technology and shifting user behaviour. It isn’t something that is going to go away, and instead signals the departure from older traditional methods. Ultimately, semantic SEO is just writing good, helpful content that matches the users underlying search intent directly, rather than simply providing content for the sake of it.
Ed Coles
Ed is the SEO Lead at Kaizen, with 8 years experience in the SEO industry. Having worked across various agencies from small to large multinational independents, Ed initially started in the world of PPC before quickly moving to the world of SEO. From helping clients in the third sector and retail, to working on larger global ecommerce sites, Ed has been responsible for supporting the roll out and delivery of global SEO strategies in EMEA and NORA across some iconic brands such as Vans, Timberland, The North Face, LEGO, and Adidas, among many others.