Companies are continuously seeking new leads and conversions from their online marketing efforts. Digital marketing has increasingly come to the forefront in the recent years as a very effective tool for growing businesses. Hence, new companies are jumping into the fray every day and entering into the digital world.
The most effective way to get traffic directed towards a website is to rank high in the search results. At some point back in the day, not too long back, this meant choosing certain keywords and focusing on it to get higher ranks. On-page and off-page optimisation around the set of keywords were what was required to get good ranks and thereby attract higher traffic.
Needless to say, with competition increasing significantly many companies started creating a lot of junk content just to get to the top. Search engines noticed this and quickly changed their ranking algorithms to force companies to increase their focus on quality. The changes in the algorithm have been constant and an ongoing affair since then, and recently semantic search has been incorporated to serve the users what they need.
The reason behind the introduction of semantic search is to create a better experience for the user. When the user is surfing the Internet, search engines collect data that allow them to understand what the user is looking for. This data is analysed intelligently using artificial intelligence with an intention to find out what exactly the user is looking for, instead of just serving in results that match the keywords.
How to take advantage of semantic search?
For the companies to get featured in semantic search, they need to ensure that their website is semantically marked up. Commonly known as structured data, Rich snippets or microdata, this Semantic Markup helps Google understand the inherent meaning of the webpages. Several schema types are available to deploy microdata. For example, a blog featuring articles needs to use the article schema type, a local business should use the local business schema. The other such schema are video, reviews, events, products, TV shows, restaurants, etc.
After you finish marking up your website, you need to test it thoroughly before going live. Any mistake can result in a drop in search rankings and traffic.
The benefits
Semantic Markup offers various types of benefits to your business. To start with, you will get more targeted traffic, and your click through rates will increase. Your website will only show up in search results if its content matches with what the users are looking for. In this way, the Users will get a better experience, and your bounce rates will go down significantly.
Since users will be visiting your website after reading the snippets that the search engines will present to them, the quality of leads that you get will also improve significantly. These people will be looking for the solution to a problem they are having presently, and if you can present it to them, they will be more likely to buy from you, resulting in a steady business growth.
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