Mediaboss Marketing

Erin Everhart is the director of web and social media marketing at 352 Media Group, a digital marketing agency that also provides web and mobile app development. Connect with her on Twitter @erinever.

While the SEO game has changed drastically over the past months, one thing has remained fairly consistent: Its been driven by keywords -- keywords in your URL structure, your META tagging, your content, your links. Whatever way you slice it, keywords are everywhere in SEO.

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Even among Googles most recent algorithm updates -- Panda, Search Plus Your World and Venice, to name a few -- keywords remained relatively unscathed. But the upcoming update to move Google to semantic search technology, according to top Google Search executive Amit Singhal, is adding a whole new element to the game: the human element.

Semantic search uses artificial intelligence in order to understand the searchers intent and the meaning of the query rather than parsing through keywords like a dictionary. When you search now, Google gives you results based solely on the text and the keywords that you put in that search. Essentially, Google gives you its best guess.

When you use semantic search, Google will dive into the relationship between those words, how they work together, and attempt to understand what those words mean. Google will understand that their and theyre has two different meanings and when New and York are placed together, it changes the meaning.

Semantic search isnt a new concept. As early as 2008, search engines were popping up that focus on natural language over keywords. But were really only taking notice now because of Google. And Google is really only taking notice because of Siri and Googles response to Siri, Google Assistant, which will be out on Android devices later this year.

The support system of this semantic search will be Googles Knowledge Graph, a conglomerate of information aimed to answer possible queries that people will be searching for. Not only will Google understand what is being searched, Knowledge Graph will aim to give you more contextual information about it, not just a list of 10 other websites that could answer that question for you.

Keywords are easy to manipulate; intent, not so much. In order to rank well in semantic search, you dont just have to put your keywords in the right places, you have to figure out the actual meaning behind those keywords and create content around that specifically. That puts more emphasis on your keyword research.

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How Google's Semantic Search Will Change SEO