Is Your Website Content Thematically Relevant?

Is Your Website Content Thematically Relevant 2020-09-14 at 12.08.26 PM

Every part of a website, from how it’s arranged to the content and even the colors, has an impact. For ranking a website, most business owners are already aware that keywords are needed and are an important part of how search engines recognize and rank content.

However, there’s a lot more that goes into optimizing a website. Thematic relevance, which is sometimes known as using semantic SEO, can make a huge difference in how search engines like Google respond to content and where it positions it in response to certain search terms, phrases, and questions.

Understanding a little more about this process and catering to it with content can help a website beat out the competition and gain more traffic for more search terms.

Basics Of Thematic Relevance

Thematic relevance is the idea of creating content for the website based on themes or categories arranged in a descending hierarchical structure. To begin with, the category is broad and it gets progressively more specific as more pages and content are created.

For instance, a website might start with an overall explanation of a general offering. Then, the next set of pages connecting to that main page will be subsequently more specific, usually catered to a marketplace, then a customer type, then a specific problem they need to solve, etc., or an individual product, then sets features and resulting capabilities, and so on.

As the themes get more specific, they also become more keyword based. The goal here is to have a broad overall theme and many progressively smaller themes, which support the main offering or company purpose.

This helps the website not only rank for the smaller keywords, but also for any keywords relating to the main theme. The focus is on creating themes, not simply creating keywords—though keywords are organically derived in the process, and usually to greater effect than simply choosing a list of applicable search terms to target.

What Is Semantic SEO?

Most of the time, SEO focuses on keywords. The goal is to add relevant keywords to the website so that higher rankings are achieved and traffic is captured when internet users search for the applicable term.

However, search trends have evolved over time. Instead of typing in a short keyword or phrase, internet users are typing in longer, more specific phrases, questions, and even using speech-to-text features and devices to submit a search query.

As a result, SEO has become more complex. This is why semantic SEO is a crucial part of an overall optimization plan.

With semantic SEO, the focus isn’t just on creating keywords to add to the website. Creating text that’s simply full of keyword instances is not going to be effective.

In fact, that could cause the ranking of a website to lower drastically. Instead, it’s better to focus on a few keywords and to create content around that.

With semantic SEO, the focus of the content is on creating quality content that naturally includes diverse and organically applied words or phrases that relate to a theme, topic, or category that gets progressively more specific.

How This Is Applied To Content

Thematic relevance and semantic SEO can both be applied to the website from the beginning and go on to be scaled as more content is required based on the needs of a marketplace, the offerings of a company, or other specifics that are likely to grow over time.

The website’s landing page should fit the overall theme of the website. This would be a broader purpose, offering, product, or service. In accordance with thematic relevance, more detailed and specific pages would follow.

All of these landing pages would be cohesively linked in an intuitive and consistent manner.

In the creation of each page, keep semantic SEO in mind. Instead of picking out keywords and simply creating basic content where they appear, follow the themes for the page.

This naturally creates keyword instances and links but in a more organic and intuitive style, which will resonate with website visitors and search engine algorithms.

Tips For Organizing Product Categories And Keywords

As the website is being created, a focus on thematic relevancy can help keep everything organized and provide structure. This will make the website is easier to navigate.

Start by thinking of the overall theme of the website. Then, identify more specific topics that fit under the main theme.  Each new group creates a new level, with the topics getting narrower the more levels there are.

Start by considering the broadest way someone might describe the offering, then drill down categories based on variables like marketplaces, individual product and service types, then unique features, capabilities, and so on.

For the higher-level landing page, the theme is broad. A clothing store, for instance, might have an overall theme of clothes and apparel. Then, landing pages would narrow down into men’s clothes, women’s clothes, and kid’s clothes.

The next level could be apparel for specific season, occasions, or individual articles of clothing. Each level is more detailed than the previous one and naturally focuses on more detailed keywords.

This can be done for just about any website. A toy store might have an overall theme of toys, and then the next layer may focus on electronics, stuffed animals, educational, etc.

The next set of landing pages might discuss each of these types by age-groups or interest. This organizes everything the company sells under the main theme and helps to organize the keywords.

In addition to using keywords more organically, this structure facilitates an orderly, logical arrangement that provides a lot of room for growth without confusion or clutter.

How Thematic Relevancy And Semantic SEO Can Be Boosted 

Incorporating thematic relevancy and semantic SEO is done when the website is created or during a redesign of the website. However, this isn’t the only time it can be implemented.

As the website is expanded on, this approach to content creation can be used to help boost the website overall. This happens when new page content or blog posts–and even posts featured off-site, such as affiliate articles or social media posts–are published.

As content is added to the website, keep thematic relevancy and semantic SEO in mind. Stick with the hierarchy that has been created and continue adding narrower topics that include more specific keywords and related phrasing.

When posting and publishing online apart from the website, it’s possible to have content that boosts thematic relevancy and semantic SEO as well. This can be through guest blog posts, videos on media sharing websites, social media posts, and more.

The content should fit in with the overall theme. As new content is created and published, it can focus on increasingly narrower topics that are more niche and therefore more likely to reach specific web users.

This type of content not only helps generate more views but helps optimize the website further—amounting to higher rankings for the very specific keywords, in addition to the overall theme.

The True Focus Of The Website

As a website is being created using thematic relevance and semantic SEO, it’s crucial to continue looking at the big picture. Even though the content continues to become narrower, it should still relate back to the overall theme and should always feed into the main goals of the website.

On today’s internet, promotional content and scattered landing pages with direct-matching of SEO phrases are increasingly ineffective. Search engine algorithms and website visitors are less likely to respond to this more rigid or hard-sell style of content.

While the website is being created and throughout the marketing plan, the focus should be on creating content that is informative and well-organized. There should be a focus on engaging visitors and proving why your company is relevant to their needs.

This is achieved through the intuitive and hierarchical structure of a thematically relevant content architecture. It cannot be accomplished with content that is simply promotional or peppered with text-for-text instances of keywords.

While the content is being created for the website or to use offline, consider what visitors might want to know and focus on creating high-quality content that provides that information to them in a progressively more detailed style.

While the goal of the website is to sell products, the goal of creating the website should focus on visitor engagement and an intuitive path to conversion. Proper organization, high-quality content, and a focus on information instead of promotion can do far more for the website and help it rank much higher in search engine results.

Get Help Creating And Managing Content

Creating and managing the content needed for thematic relevancy and semantic SEO is not easy to do without knowledge and experience. It’s a lot of work and it takes time, trial, and error to learn how to do everything as effectively as possible.

It is crucial to be highly organized and to develop a plan before implementation, and then there is the process of implementation itself.

Business owners who are ready to create or redesign a website, and who want to gain the benefits of thematic relevancy and semantic SEO, will reap the highest rewards from working with an SEO specialist or agency that focuses on thematically relevant content building.

Long gone are the days when websites could simply focus on promotions and adding as many keywords as possible to the site.

Now, it’s crucial to make sure the website includes high-quality content that is also arranged in an intuitive and strategic manner—one that is focused on the changing sensibilities of search engine algorithms and internet users.

You can cater your website and its content to these modern sensibilities by making use of thematic relevance and semantic SEO. There is a lot of value in finding professional guidance as you do so.

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