What is semantics in writing?

If you’re anything like me, when you first heard of “semantic search, ” “semantic web, ” and “entities, ” you thought – not more monsters to tame! When did they think these up?

Actually, they are all part of the same “monster” and they’ve been around a while, lurking under the bed waiting to come out of their dark corners. But now that they’re out and functioning, they’re more like the characters in “Monsters Inc.” than the freak in “Frankenstein’s Monster.” Get to know them and you may actually like them.

True semantics

Here’s a simple way to think of them:

• are attributes like names, numbers, addresses, or other items of data that reside on the Web.
• is where the entities reside and how they’re coded to make them accessible to anyone from anywhere.
• is the relation between all the entities that give wider meaning to our content and the searches for it.

Behind that simplicity is a more complex explanation and you can find it by Googling any of the terms.

What will be more useful to you as a content producer is how you use them to build better content and attract more traffic.

Hummingbird is semantic search in flight

Google Hummingbird is semantic search in practice. Bing has its version, too, although they haven’t given it a name. You can see it in use in the way Google and Bing display information to answer your queries with sidebars (Knowledge Graphs, Rich Snippets) or carousels of information you didn’t ask for but that help you learn if your search engine understood your query.

Do a search on a topic and a Knowledge Graph will display data on locations or people or organizations associated with, conferences or speeches about it, with links.