To improve the relevancy of your content for search engine perspectives you must first improve their meaning. And in this game, let me tell you that your skills as a writer are not enough. Of course, using short sentences, no jargon and a personal tone in place of neutral one will result in having much readable content.
These basic writing skills won’t however add meaning to your text. And for nowadays search engines, meaning means a lot in their way to process the quality of a web page.
You might be tempted then to put more generic keywords, long-tail keywords or related ones to your content. But once again, to repeat a word in a text is not improving its relevancy and his meaning. Worse, you will add confusion in the readability of your content, which will lead to a lack of your credibility as a writer for the subject you would cover.
I would suggest you pay attention to entities instead. Moreover, I would suggest you pay attention to their relationship.
I know these two concepts are certainly abstract to you. But it is necessary for you to understand their importance for search engines and why using them in your content would benefit your ranking.
In this article, which has no intention of being technical, I am going to explain the concepts of entities, entity relationships, why they are beneficial for your SEO, and how to use them in your texts.
What are entities ?
Simply put, entities are identifiable living things in the real world. Entities can be either tangible things like animals, countries, places, or intangible things like religion, concepts and ideas.
Japan, cetaceans, republicans, student, lemon are considered as entities. All these entities have attributes or properties that give them their identity.
For example the Japan entity has attributes like : currency, calling code, population, time zone etc…
What is entity-relationship ?
Entity-relationship defines how an entity is linked to another entity. The relationship between two entities is thought of as a verb.
Example : Lemon is a citrus / Japan’s people are called japanese / Tim Berners-Lee is the founder of the web.
Why are entities and entity-relationships important concepts in SEO ?
From the down of time, the will of search engines has always been to meet people’s informational needs. To achieve this goal, search engines have continuously evolved their algorithms.
Originally, and to simplify my explanations, search engines judged the quality of a URL based on the number of keywords within it and its popularity represented by backlinks.
Until the 2010s, a shift occurred, one might say. Search engines then used advanced technologies like machine learning and deep learning to create “intelligent” algorithms that considered the relationships that might exist between things, important concepts in life.
I explain a bit more what was this shift here : Entity-base search, an introduction
By understanding the entities on a web page and their relationships to each other, search engines can better determine the relevance and usefulness of the content. This has brought to more personalized and accurate search results, and it’s a trend that’s likely to continue as search engines become even more advanced in the years ahead.
How can you optimize your content’s meaning with entity-relationship ?
I want to reassure you, using entities and their relationships is not complicated at all. In my opinion, it’s a practice that is more about common sense than anything else. To improve the meaning of a text, there is no need to write long-form content, just to put together the right information.
So let’s begin with a “template” or a “to-do” you can follow. It’s easy to handle but it requires you time.
Gather all the information you have about the topic you want to cover
It could be a product, it could be your company, it could be safety measures etc.. Whatever you want to talk about, you must have a full understanding of it. There should be no question that could be asked on this topic that would go unanswered.
Even the tiniest detail is important. Material, common usages, size, weight, standards, color, history, brands, manufacturing process, I encourage you to gather as much information as possible.
My advice is to gather representatives from each department of your company and exchange views on everyone’s vision. Be careful, you are not there to find an agreement but to obtain feedback and the representation that people have of the topic or topics you want to address on your site. Don’t forget the client’s review too.
Gather entities and related entities
Your job now is to do an entity’s research. In other words write down on a piece of paper all entities and related entities describing your topic.
Example : Garden shed entities are : garden / shed / wood / ground / outdoor / storage etc…
You will likely find out terms that you bring into the table during step 1. This second step does not mean to add much more information but to refine the amount of information you gathered in step 1 by revealing entities. (see entities as the most relevant words to not miss when talk about a topic).
Identify related pages
To improve your content’s meaning and relevance for search engines and people, also means to link internal pages or external pages that are related to each other. This linking, when it is well done, allows both users and search engines to delve deeper into the subject they are currently reading.
Focus first on the pages within your website by taking care of the main topic covered, of their lexical semantics and of their own internal and external links (anchor text should be a relevant indicator of the nature of the links). Then focus on external pages (information sources).
Work on “phrases framework”
You have all the entities, related entities, entities attributes, technical words in your hands to start shaping phrases framework. You goal here is to join together the right words and entities in order to get meaningful and relevant phrases.
Take a look first at the entities and what are those who have the more chance to be “mixed”. Remember that you must play with entity-relationship (entities that are complementary and are linked with a verb)to get more meaningful phrases.
It’s easier to dilute meaning and relevance if a sentence is too long. Prefer using short phrases framework to facilitate and consolidate meaning. Not more than 15-20 words per phrase.
It is better to write:
“ A garden shed is a small structure located in a garden or yard. This construction is designed for storage gardening tools, equipment, and supplies.
Than
“A garden shed, it’s like, a tiny construction, for storing stuff for gardening, equipment and all, usually somewhere not close to a home or behind it.”
“So, there’s this thing called a garden shed, and it’s a smallish sort of building, and people use it to put their garden tools and equipment in it, and it’s often located somewhere around the back of a house or maybe a bit away from the house.”
When you’ll end up with your writing, I advise you to share them with the representatives you worked with to achieve steps 1 and 2. Implying them is a good solution for knowing if your phrases mean something. Does your entity-relationship add meaning and relevance to your content ?
If there is a sense of confusion when reading your phrases, either it is because you used the wrong entities or the wrong verb. Try as much as possible to make simple phrases. Don’t overcomplicate them. The more you will write simple sentences using 2 or 3 entities the more control you will have in shaping their context, their meaning and their relevance.