Semantic Search vs Keyword Search: Which Is Better for SEO?

For years, keyword search has been a dominant strategy in SEO. And while keywords are still important, they’re not the only thing that matters.

Semantic search has emerged as a critical factor in how search engines rank content. It’s all about understanding the meaning and intent behind a search, not just the specific words used.

In this blog post, we’ll compare semantic search vs keyword search, revealing how they differ and which is better for SEO.

What Is Semantic Search?

Semantic search focuses on the meaning behind a search query.

It’s less about the specific words used and more about the search intent (aka what the user is actually looking for).

As search engines have become more sophisticated, this process has become easier.

For example, let’s say a user searches “jaguar” in Google.

Are they looking for information about the animal, the car, or the operating system?

Semantic search uses context to figure this out.

If the user has previously searched for information about animals, the search engine is more likely to show results about the jaguar cat. If they’ve been browsing car websites, they’ll probably see results about Jaguar cars.

Personally, I don’t have a search history for any of the above, so Google served me a mixed bag of results.

Ultimately, semantic search aims to understand what users want and deliver the most relevant results.

It’s a big shift in how search engines work, and it has major implications for SEO.

How Does Semantic Search Work?

Semantic search isn’t magic. It’s powered by some pretty sophisticated technology.

Here’s a simplified look at how it works:

• Understanding User Intent: The first step is for the search engine to understand what the user is trying to find. This involves analyzing the search query, considering past search history, location, and other contextual signals. What’s the user’s goal? Are they looking for information, a product, or a specific website?
• Knowledge Graph: Google (and other search engines) use a massive knowledge graph. This is a database of interconnected entities – people, places, things, and concepts – and their relationships. For example, the Knowledge Graph knows that “Albert Einstein” is related to “physics,” “relativity,” and “Nobel Prize.” This helps the search engine understand the connections between different concepts.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP allows search engines to understand human language. It breaks down sentences, identifies keywords, and analyzes the grammatical structure. This helps the search engine understand the meaning of the words used in a search query.
• Machine Learning: Search engines use machine learning algorithms to constantly improve their understanding of language and user intent. They analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and refine their search results. The more data they process, the better they get at understanding what users are looking for.
• Contextual Signals: As mentioned earlier, search engines also consider contextual signals. These can include the user’s location, search history, device, and even the time of day. These signals help the search engine personalize the search results and deliver the most relevant information.

In short, semantic search combines several advanced technologies to understand the meaning and intent behind a search.

It goes beyond simply matching keywords and aims to provide users with the most relevant and helpful results.

How to Optimize for Semantic Search

Optimizing for semantic search isn’t about abandoning keywords altogether. It’s about shifting your focus to topics and user intent.

Here’s a step-by-step approach:

1. Understand Your Audience

Before you do anything, you need to understand your target audience.

Who are they? What are their needs and interests? What questions are they asking?

The better you understand your audience, the better you can create content that resonates with them.

2. Perform Keyword Research (with a Semantic Twist)

Keyword research is still important, but you don’t have to limit yourself to a single primary keyword. Think about additional keywords that tie in broader topics and related concepts.

This approach allows you to create more comprehensive content, speaking to the various angles of a topic.

Keyword research tools can help you identify the following:

• Focus keywords
• Related keywords
• LSI keywords
• And more

The good news?

All these keywords are easy to find in LowFruits.

LowFruits is the best long-tail keyword research tool for small business owners.

It helps you find keywords you can actually rank for and identify themes using topic clusters. (We’ll get into this more shortly.)

You’ll get keyword reports that use exclusive metrics to help you prioritize which to target, such as:

• SERP Difficulty Score (SD): The LowFruits metric for keyword difficulty. 1 is the easiest to rank for, and 3 is the hardest.
• Weak Spots: Low-authority domains ranking in the top 10 search results for a specific keyword.

Furthermore, you can explore different ways to view your keywords by clicking the tabs at the top of the report.

For example, I like using the Questions tab to come up with FAQs to include in content.

Ultimately, LowFruits is a beginner-friendly tool for traditional keyword research and identifying semantic keywords.

It can help you understand the overall topic landscape of a keyword and support your content creation for a broader reach.

3. Conduct a SERP Analysis

Analyze the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your target keywords and topics.

What kind of content is already ranking? What questions are being answered? What’s the user intent behind the top-ranking pages?

This will help you understand what kind of content you need to create to compete.

In LowFruits, you can do a SERP analysis directly from any keyword report.

Just click View the SERP next to the keyword you’re interested in analyzing.

This action will open a pop-out window of the top 10 search results in Google.

In the example below, we see that competitors are writing listicles for the keyword “best attractions in plymouth.” This lets us know that we should probably do the same if we also want to rank for this keyword.

4. Build Topic Clusters

Now that you’ve identified your keywords and analyzed the SERPs, it’s time to build topic clusters.

Topic clusters allow you to identify themes and related topics to a central subject.

They create a foundation for your content strategy, helping you identify pillar pages and cluster pages.

Ultimately, the goal of topic clusters is to provide comprehensive topic coverage and build authority on specific subjects.

With LowFruits, you can create semantic clusters in seconds.

To get started, click the Clusters tab at the top of any keyword report. Then, click Semantic Clustering.

LowFruits will ask how many common words to use for keyword grouping. I recommend using the lowest setting (2) to get the most results.

In just a few seconds, you’ll get a report of semantic keyword clusters.

In the above example, I used the seed keyword “los angeles florist” for my keyword search. This query generated the following semantic clusters:

• Los angeles florist district
• Flower delivery la
• How to become a florist in california

As we can see, these keywords aren’t an exact match for our initial search (los angeles florist). They also don’t have an identical search intent.

Instead, they’re related to the main topic of an LA florist, and each could use its own cluster page.

This process expands your keyword targeting and helps establish your site as a comprehensive resource for a core topic.

You would then link these cluster pages back to your pillar page, creating a powerful network of interconnected content.

5. Create High-Quality, Comprehensive Content

This is the most important step.

Focus on creating in-depth, informative content that thoroughly answers user questions and covers all aspects of a topic.

Don’t just stuff keywords into your content. Focus on providing genuine value to the reader.

Think about the user journey and what information they need at each stage.

6. Implement Schema Markup

Schema markup is code that you add to your website to provide search engines with more information about your content.

Think of it as giving search engines a cheat sheet that explains what your page is about.

Here’s what it looks like in HTML:

Using schema markup can improve your chances of appearing in rich results, such as featured snippets (shown below) and People Also Ask.

There are different types of schema markup for different types of content, such as articles, products, and events.

Implementing schema helps search engines understand the context and meaning of your content, which is essential for semantic search.

You can use Google’s Rich Results Test tool to validate your schema and ensure it’s implemented correctly.

By following these steps, you can optimize your content for semantic search and improve your chances of ranking higher in search results.

It’s about creating content that not only targets relevant keywords but also satisfies user intent and provides real value.

Now, let’s look at keyword search.

What Is Keyword Search?

Before semantic search became such a big deal, keyword search was the bread and butter of SEO.

It’s still important, so let’s talk about what it is.

In simple terms, keyword search focuses on the exact words people type into search engines.

The goal is to optimize your website content so it ranks highly for those specific keywords.

Think back to the early days of search engines.

They were pretty basic.

Search engines primarily looked for pages that contained the exact keywords a user searched for.

If someone searched for “blue widgets,” the search engine would look for pages that contained those two words. That’s keyword search in its purest form.

While search engines have become much more sophisticated, keyword search is still a fundamental part of on-page SEO.

How Does Keyword Search Work?

Keyword search is all about matching the words on your website to the words people use when they search.

Here’s a simplified breakdown of the process:

• Keyword Research: First, you need to figure out what keywords your target audience is using. This involves brainstorming, using SEO keyword research tools, and analyzing your competitors. You’re looking for the words and phrases that people type into search engines when they’re looking for something related to your business.
• On-Page Optimization: Once you’ve identified your target keywords, you need to incorporate them into your website content. This means using them in your SEO titles, headings, meta descriptions, and within the body of your content. However, it’s crucial to use keywords naturally. Don’t stuff them into your content just for the sake of it. Your content should maintain a good readability score.
• Off-Page Optimization: Keyword search also involves off-page SEO, which refers to activities you do outside your website to improve your rankings. A key part of this is link building. When other websites link to your site, it signals to search engines that your site is authoritative and trustworthy. These links should ideally use your target keywords in the anchor text (the clickable text of the link).
• Search Engine Crawling and Indexing: Search engines use “crawlers” (also known as “bots” or “spiders”) to scan the web and discover new pages. When a user performs a search, the search engine looks through its index to find the most relevant pages. Keywords make it easier for search engines to identify your page as a relevant source when a user enters a specific search query.
• Ranking: The search engine then ranks the search results based on a variety of factors, including the relevance of the keywords, the quality of the content, the authority of the website, and other technical SEO factors. The pages that are deemed most relevant and authoritative are displayed at the top of the search results.

In a nutshell, keyword search is about optimizing your website so that it’s easily found and understood by search engines when someone searches for your target keywords.

While the process is more complex than this simplified explanation, these are the core concepts you need to understand.

How to Optimize for Keyword Search

Keyword optimization remains important, even in the age of semantic search. Here’s a quick overview of how to do it:

1. Perform Keyword Research

Use SEO tools to find relevant keywords with a good balance of search volume and competition. Explore both short-tail and long-tail keywords.

In LowFruits, you can use the KWFinder for this process.

After entering a seed keyword, click Search.

LowFruits will ask you how you want to view your report.

I typically recommend selecting the second option (analyze all high-intent keywords) because it gives you the most data. However, if you’re low on credits, you can always select the first option and pick which keywords to analyze manually.

From here, you’ll get a keyword report like the one below.

As mentioned earlier, focus on the SD and Weak Spots metrics to identify keywords that have the most ranking potential.

This will help you prioritize which keywords to target in your content.

2. Optimize Your On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing your web pages to rank in search results. A significant portion of it relies on keyword optimizations in the following areas:

• SEO titles
• Meta descriptions
• Headings
• Body copy
• Image alt text
• URL slugs

Ideally, you would include your primary keyword in each of the above elements. You should also sprinkle related keywords throughout your content.

3. Create High-Quality Content

Like semantic search, keyword search also depends on high-quality content creation.

Focus on delivering valuable content that satisfies user intent.

This will help you fulfill your audience’s needs and improve engagement metrics, like time on page and bounce rate.

Need help with content creation?

Refer to the resources linked in the earlier section under high-quality content for semantic search.

4. Leverage Internal Links

Internal links connect different pages of your website.

They help users and bots discover other content and understand the relationship between pages.

For keyword search, you should link relevant pages within your site using keyword-rich anchor text.

Anchor text is the blue, clickable text of a hyperlink. It should accurately describe the linked page and be as short as possible.

5. Monitor Search Engine Rankings

One of the last steps is to check your SEO rankings and monitor their position changes over time.

The LowFruits Rank Tracker can help you with this process.

Rank Tracker monitors your most important keywords in Google and presents data in a user-friendly dashboard.

You can expand any keyword to see how its position changed, allowing you to adjust your strategy as needed.

You can also view top-ranking websites to see if there’s an opportunity to improve your content and boost your rankings.

Semantic Search vs Keyword Search: Differences Explained

Now that we’ve taken a deep dive into semantic search vs keyword search, let’s see how they stack up against one another in a direct comparison.

Feature	Semantic Search	Keyword Search
Focus	Meaning and intent behind the search	Exact words used in the search
Goal	Understand the user’s needs and provide the most relevant results	Match the search query with relevant keywords
Method	Uses AI, machine learning, and knowledge graphs	Relies on keyword matching and on-page SEO
Content Strategy	Creating comprehensive content covering topics and related concepts	Targeting specific keywords in content and meta tags
User Experience	Prioritizes user satisfaction and provides a seamless experience	Focuses on optimizing for specific keyword targets
Relevance	Considers context, user history, and other signals	Primarily based on keyword presence and frequency
Evolution	Represents the future of search	Traditional approach to SEO
Example 1	Searching for “best running shoes for flat feet” returns results tailored to that specific need, even if the exact phrase isn’t on the page.	Searching for “running shoes” returns general results, and ranking depends heavily on how often “running shoes” appears on the page.
Example 2	Searching for “What’s the weather like today?” considers your location and provides a localized forecast.	Searching for “weather” might return general weather information, not necessarily specific to your location.

This table highlights the core differences between semantic search and keyword search.

While keyword search is still important, semantic search is becoming increasingly dominant as search engines get better at understanding user intent.

Now, the final question remains: which is better for SEO?

Semantic Search vs Keyword Search: Which Is Better for SEO?

The best approach for SEO is a combined strategy that leverages both semantic search and keyword search.

While it might seem like semantic search is the “winner” because it’s more advanced and focuses on user intent, keyword search is not dead. Keywords are still the foundation of how people search. You need to know what words your target audience is using to find your content.

Think of it this way: keyword search helps you target specific search queries. Semantic search helps you broaden your reach and rank for related topics and concepts.

Together, they provide a strong foundation for a comprehensive and successful SEO strategy.

FAQs

Final Thoughts

There’s no debate that SEO is always changing. Semantic search is now crucial, but keyword search remains important.

The good news is you don’t have to choose one over the other.

In fact, the best SEO strategies optimize for both.

Keyword searches help you understand the language your audience uses and semantic search improves your reach by focusing on meaning and intent.

Combine them to stand out in search results, increase organic traffic, and achieve your SEO goals.