This week I participated in a very fruitful forum discussion on the Semantic Web. It helped me better conceptualize what it is; and, more importantly, how it can be applied to the subset of Internet marketing I specialize in - SEO. That discussion leads me to believe that the Semantic Web technology is really the future of SEO.
*What Is the Semantic Web?
This is a broad question, and you get different answers depending upon whom you ask. But I want to try to define it in terms of SEO.
Basically, the purpose of SW technology is to help search engines understand the meaning of web content better. That's really it in a nutshell.
For example, in previous HTML iterations, we used to use the <b> tag to stand for "bold." <b> told web browsers: "Display this text darker and thicker than the rest." It is, in essence, a representational tag; it doesn't tell the browser anything qualitative or evaluative about the text; it merely tells how to display it.
Then, the W3C came out with the <strong> tag. Though it may not be obvious, the <strong> tag is a sort of beginning of the reach toward a more semantic markup. It tells the browser "This text has a strong emphasis" but it does not tell the browser how exactly to render - or represent - the text. It gives data about the text, that it should be emphasized in some way.
Next, it became more proper to do away with these sorts of "old-school" tags. Though most of us still use them to give display directives to browsers, correct W3C markup is to use the <span> or <div> elements, in conjuction with inline or external <style> directives, to display text features. So now we use code like
<span class="text decoration:bold">
To tell the browser how to render something. More meaning is given here than in the <strong>. This new markup says, "Whatever is within this span, it is more important than whatever is outside the span." See how the markup is providing more and more info about the info?
*More and More Meaning
The point of all this is that Web markup language has been evolving towards providing more data about data, as opposed to simply ... Well ...conveying or displaying data. This "data about data" we call metadata. In other words, more and more coding language is being used to give information about the natural language it is manipulating.
If you can understand this basic idea, namely, that markup language is moving increasingly toward talking "about" language instead of merely representing language, then you're already on your way to grasping the import of the Semantic Web.
*So, What Is the Semantic Web, Again? And Why Is It Important to the Future of SEO?
Now, since 2005, roughly, there have been a family of markup languages that have been developed. And they have been developed for precisely this reason: to provide more "data about the data". Why do we need more metadata? Well, we (humans) don't need it so much. But machines (e.g., browsers, software, search engines, servers, etc) well, they do need it.
Let me give you an example of why.
Google the phrase "fried chicken in kentucky." What you get is several results for "Kentucky Fried Chicken." In fact, this will be the first search result. Now, there's nothing wrong with this, if in fact your intention was to find a nearby KFC. But what if your intention was to find how how people in kentucky like to fry chicken?
See, a search engine (i.e., a machine) has a hard time knowing what you mean. This is because there is no real machine language (e.g., HTML) that can explain this to the machine, until recently.
That's what the new family of markup languages aims to do: give enough data about data (i.e., your search term) to "understand" the true meaning of your search.
*Semantics and SEO
How does this all play into SEO? Well, one goal of SEOs is to achieve higher rankings for certain search terms, right? In order to do this, an SEO uses techniques to feed the search engines exactly the data about a website he wants them to know. He also attaches the relative importance of that data as well. In other words, the SEO tries to give the SEs added meaning, i.e., semantics.
As such, an SEO is very much concerned with "data about data", i.e., metadata. He manipulates meta keywords, meta descriptions, link relationships, alt img src, <strong> and <h> tags - and a whole host of other web markup data - in order to achieve these results.
In short, an SEOs success hinges upon being able to make sure that search engines read all of his website's content and understand it in the way he wants them to.
Well, this is all semantics, when you think about it.
The Semantic Web SEO would basically do all this, but to an ever-increasing degree. He would extract all representational coding from the old days and separate that out to a CSS file, for instance, and then recode the tags in a more Semantic way (e.g., using <span class> in place of <b>).
As he's doing this, he begins to see that virtually all tags are Semantic in spirit. He will start thinking about how each of them may be re-represented, recoded, to provide more data about the data.
And then he will make a discovery: that languages already exist to assist with this. Perhaps the most pertinent for SEO is one called Resource Description Framework A (RDFa). He will begin to learn of the SEO potential of RDFa. He may also start making broader use of Microformats - which are, in a sense, RDF prototypes. In short, he will begin to see that there really is no limit to what he can "communicate" to a search engine about his website content. The SEOs who master this the best will likely achieve higher rankings and greater visibility than the ones who don't.
...and THAT is the future of SEO, baby!
*Gnosis Arts: On the Cutting Edge
Just so you know, our team is already hard at work on learning these new semantic markup languages. We are doing our research and experimentation as this blog post is published. We always strive to stay at the very top of our game, not satisfied that any SEO agency should know more than we.
If your firm would like to talk to us about how we can enhance your website's visibility, rankings and traffic, contact us at
http://gnosisarts.genbook.com
Or by phone at 908.458.9122
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