NLP For On-Page SEO

The SEO method is markedly different from the website architecture available years ago.

With the integration of new and improved NLP techniques in software, the way people consume information has significantly evolved. During this era of evolving search engine algorithms, one of the key players is natural language processing or NLP.

To make your page stand out on the internet, you must have a clear structure that you can develop with NLP. It’s part of the larger SEO tactic and helps make the subject more accessible to readers and search crawlers.

The best way to get to know NLP would be to think of it as X-ray goggles, allowing you to see what goes on underneath all the articles. When people browse a site, there are specific ways to grab their attention.

We’ll discuss all that in today’s guide as we explain NLP’s impact on SEO.

What is Natural Language Processing (NLP)?

The semantic search capability of natural language processing SEO helps organise content, enabling Google to understand and interpret search intent more effectively. Just as you need to remember important information, Google attempts to create knowledge graphs, a structured format of storage for ideas and articles.

In other words, using natural language processing is an SEO method that works by converting human ideas into content for machine learning. Hence, it helps Google understand human behaviour for success in online marketing.

NLP plays a crucial role in content optimisation for any SEO tactic, ensuring that users get value for spending time on your page. The keyword engines can rank the page for intent, matching an article to the query without hassle.

The application of natural language processing techniques harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and Machine Learning. ML stores words and the ways they combine like a database.

The data are fed into ML engines and processed based on grammar rules and real-life linguistic habits of people. The computer can see patterns and predict what’s next using this data.

We’ll discuss this in greater detail in the following section.

SEO Strategy

As part of NLP, you need to be aware of the changes that are taking place in digital marketing. Every so often, there comes an algorithm that changes the way people consume content.

You must be proactive and detect these minute changes to adapt your SEO tactics accordingly. This proactive approach offers innovative seo solutions, providing a competitive edge and improving the website ranking.

You’ll have to find ways to get better by keeping one eye on the future. Especially with the rise of NLP, understanding user experience, marketing trends, and structured data are more important than ever.

BERT Algorithm

If you think back to 2019, when Google announced the release of its BERT algorithm, the statement read that it would impact 10% of Google Search queries. This was significant, leading to SEOs gathering data about BERT and affecting their articles.

Through the BERT model, Google searches have become more focused on quality topics, leading people to browse relevant blog posts. More importantly, the algorithm uses natural language processing to answer search queries.

Importance Of The BERT Update

The BERT update was a forward step in machine learning models, helping it analyse every piece of content. It links words or phrases related to different texts, helping Google rank pages based on users’ writing intent and content value.

So, with BERT and NLP working together, there’s a change in the impact of traditional search platforms on SEO methods. You understand what people need and how to cater to your content to answer a search query.

The bottom line is that if your page provides relevant, accurate information, the chances are that it will be higher up on the search list.

Understanding BERT

From the point of view of SEOs, BERT and NLP work in partnership to achieve the desired result. But first, we’ll tell you about the two essential components of Google’s algorithm: methodology and data.

We found that the BERT update collects data related to different content and then analyses it. To ensure efficient analysis, BERT uses NLP, ensuring that it understands the context of an article by looking at specific categories and phrases.

We suggest that you look at pages with a high rank to make sense of how they curate their content. Even something as simple as researching a sentence or word, before and after keywords, will help optimise the page according to your needs.

Hence, Google can easily find content related to the query, generating search traffic for the website.

Changes Brought By NLP

It’s no secret that the natural human language is complex and has changed how people and search bots view content. Instead of looking at words and phrases as separate entities, Google considers an entire sentence, paragraph, or phrase. In other words, search platforms like Google are conducting sentiment analysis.

Contrary to popular opinion, NLP is not new to digital marketing and has always existed in one form or another. Its latest form for on-page search rankings is BERT, allowing users to compare the SEO content with other pages available out there.

While ensuring that the algorithm’s content is easy to understand is important, your priority should be the users. After writing an article, it’s important to get perspective and ask yourself if the content answers the user’s query.

In some cases, when you compare the content to other pages, you may find that supporting content needs to be added. This is a critical step because you can’t always judge the efficacy of a blog post solely based on relevant search results.

How Google Uses Natural Language Processing?

One way to stay on top of Google’s algorithm is to place yourself in the tech giant’s shoes. By using NLP in on-page search rankings, try to determine how Google aims to evolve.

While there are several reasons, the most significant is improving search quality. Any algorithm that Google introduces must be helpful to consumers; otherwise, it doesn’t hold value.

Users want an answer related to a specific query, so Google Search can’t afford to display irrelevant content. It needs to adapt according to consumer demands by focusing on the text’s title, the relevance of the topic, and the article’s intent.

Machine Learning

Even though we touched upon ML in passing, discussing it in greater detail is essential. Just as the human mind learns new things, Google comes across new information.

This is especially true with the advent of voice search, allowing users to be more specific in their demands. However, sometimes it becomes difficult for the algorithm to understand what the user is saying or search for content without historical data.

Thus, NLP aids Google in better understanding search queries and delivering accurate responses. And there’s no denying that website architecture has undergone drastic changes due to NLP.

Relevance Of Sentiment in NLP

To understand whether certain content should rank higher, Google BERT helps find the link between different words in a sentence. Unsurprisingly, Google’s algorithm focuses on keywords and their synonyms to learn a new topic.

Occasionally, you may also encounter a text containing’ stop words,’ which have multiple meanings, making it harder for the search crawlers to grasp the context. But with the latest tools, it becomes easier for Google to rank on the page and understand its sentiment. The most important tool to use here is Google’s Natural Language API demo, a free tool.

Even if the search crawler can’t follow the language, it can pick up on positive or negative sentiments thanks to specific words. So, if your page has an overall negative sentiment, it will fall down the rankings, meaning your SEO method isn’t great.

The sentiment impacts the score, which in turn changes the rankings. Understandably, a lot of time is spent in sentiment analysis, ensuring search crawlers find your content contextually relevant to consumers.

A sentence with positive words will have a sentiment score ranging from 0.25 to 1, whereas negative texts will score between -0.25 and -1. Sometimes. The content may also express a neutral sentiment, meaning the score will hover between +0.25 and -0.25.

Overall, it would help keep a positive sentiment score without affecting the natural flow of words.

Entity In NLP

When you delve deeper into natural language processing, you must consider content entities. In simple terms, any object that you can categorise is an entity. Subsequently, NLP analyses these entities to improve the page ranking.

Entities, forming a part of the knowledge graph, play a crucial role in SEO efforts, enabling Google to sift through various categories and deliver the desired result. What’s more, an entity has two parts — category and salience.

We’ve already discussed how SEOs break the content into categories. So, let’s talk about the salience, which is known as the relevance 0f a specific entity as it appears in the text. Moreover, search engines provide a salience score after analysing an article, with the highest score being one and the lowest 0.

Using Natural Language Algorithm In SEO Tactic

It’s essential to understand that you should use natural language processing as a part of a comprehensive SEO strategy, as it alone cannot guarantee success. It isn’t easy to achieve success in marketing without NLP, as it allows you to engage in both content and query analysis.

The former is particularly useful for researching the consumer’s online activity, telling you what they are looking for. Once you know, you can design your SEO method accordingly and curate the content to meet the target audience’s demands.

Furthermore, search platforms can deliver faster and more accurate results for enhanced user experience thanks to SEO NLP.

API DEMO

SEO techniques focus on structured markup, meaning search crawlers can understand and rank your page after comparing it with other websites. And with Google’s tools like API demo, a free-cost natural language software, you can examine any text.

It provides all the information to create an effective NLP architecture, permitting you to see how Google distinguishes the difference and rates your content in the online marketing world.

Keyword Research

As with most SEO techniques, keyword research plays a vital role in the context of machine learning. It allows you to make an article relevant for consumers while the search bot picks up on the structured markup format of the page.

Speaking of structure, having keyword architecture improves how people respond to the content. With the BERT update and NLP, you can compare your choice of words to other available articles.

Finding out which word works best will improve your ranking drastically, ensuring search crawlers understand the page’s intent. Since the top sites also rank for keywords, you can survey which keyword combinations Google rates highly. And you can target those keywords to answer a specific query.

External Backlinks

Another essential attribute of using NLP is effective linking. For any SEO tactic, internal and external linking prove vital for enhancing the relevance of your page.

Your page must engage in inbound and outbound linking, improving user experience. For example, inbound links focus on using appropriate keywords related to a specific query, directing organic traffic to your page.

If Google’s tools consider your content relevant, other pages will link to your page, taking the website higher up the ranking. Similarly, it’s important to link to relevant articles after careful analysis, helping your website stand out.

However, you can direct a user to other trustworthy sources rather than link to rival pages. It shows that people can trust you to answer a topic necessary answer.

Competitor Analysis

Using NLP as part of an SEO method means looking at how top content marketers write. Analysing the content helps you optimise the article so that it’s easy for consumers to solve their queries.

To give people what they are looking for, Google needs to understand the world as we do, but that’s not possible.

The more realistic expectation would be to improve user experience through API demo and BERT, helping sentiment analysis. For that, Google’s tools need to have access to the data available on the internet.

So, data collection holds the key to ensuring that machines learn quickly to meet user demands.

Page Optimisation Through NLP In SEO

To fully utilise NLP for developing SEO architecture on a page, it would help to look at the following factors.

1. Title Links

When you type a query into the Google Search engine, the title tag is the page’s name. For the page to appear higher up on the list, the machine algorithm must understand the content and context of the page.

Hence, you can add specific keywords to the title, making it easier for the search engine to rank your content. It would also help keep the title tag short and place the keyword at the beginning to make the full name visible to a user.

2. URL Structure

Equally significant is creating a relevant URL that proves convenient for consumers and search platforms. We recommend that the URL have short descriptions of the topic, ensuring the machine algorithm can display accurate results.

Also, instead of using numbers, it would help to include a keyword, allowing people to understand the user intent better. A clear and precise URL helps update the site’s structure, generating consistent traffic.

3. Headings

As we go deeper into the SEO architecture, you’ll see how your writing impacts the page’s ranking. For your text to be agreeable to modern search engines, you must divide the page and its featured snippets into categories.

Each category will have a heading to break up the text into clear sub-sections, and you can use different font sizes to create the desired effect. It’s also essential to add heading tags for the convenience of consumers and search engines.

You can use these tags throughout the body of the text, allowing people to grasp the topic quickly. What’s more, thanks to related keywords, search engines don’t have trouble understanding the context of the page.

4. Writing The Meta

Meta descriptions summarise the page’s content in just a few words. When you type a query into the search engine, it appears on the results page, helping users understand if the content is relevant.

Although it doesn’t directly impact on-page optimisation, meta descriptions play a key role in SEO architecture. Depending on the search query, Google highlights similar words so that consumers can follow the featured snippets to a top website.

Like the other points in this list, you must use core keywords to ensure that the meta description stands out. Also, keep the sentence short and crisp for the most significant impact.

5. Creating A Keyword Database

You need to create a keyword database and update your SEO tactic. Knowing which keyword or phrase will help establish a clear topic in your articles is essential, leading to more traffic.

Once the SEO method kicks in, you can’t afford to lie back and wait for things to happen. Online content is constantly evolving, and you must know what words other writers are using.

For example, it’s doubtful that your content will be unique, given that so many web pages have the same target audience. However, you can develop an understanding of how Google’s search engines rank specific phrases, leaving a mark on customers.

6. Innovate

Thanks to keyword tools, it becomes easier to distribute the phrases throughout the article than concentrate them in one portion. It would be best to analyse the monthly search volume and determine how certain words perform. Hence, you can get rid of irrelevant material to bring the page up to speed with Google’s algorithm.

We suggest using both short and long-tail keywords to make your articles relevant. As the name suggests, the latter consists of 3-4 words and doesn’t have many takers in content marketing. Conversely, it works great for specific queries, allowing the search engine to better understand the article’s intent.

7. Alt-Tags

SEO experts will tell you to judge the content on the page, irrespective of the design, because search engines don’t understand multimedia. That’s where alt-tags come in.

Alt-tags expand your reach, ensuring that the content reaches most people. Remember to add a relevant alt tag whenever you use a multimedia file so that the machine algorithm understands the topic.

You can add a description to the image file, increasing the website’s chances of ranking higher.

Improving Through NLP

After regular intervals, it’s important to evaluate the content on the page and optimise it with SEO and NLP practices. We have discussed some of these topics before, but let’s look into them in greater detail.

1. Adding New Content

Just because an article was relevant in the past doesn’t mean that you will keep writing on the same topic. It’s important to adapt, meaning you must create quality content and ensure the page stays relevant.

Firstly, start by removing irrelevant and duplicate articles to improve your SEO ranking. When you have similar posts distributed across the website, it confuses the search engine and doesn’t know which page to rank.

Similarly, when site visitors repeatedly read the same thing, it frustrates them, reducing organic traffic.

2. Internal Linking

Unlike backlinking, internal linking focuses on providing adequate links for all the pages on your website. It would help link the pages together and the landing pages to develop a consistent theme throughout the website.

That said, don’t keep more than 2-3 sub-categories under each theme, making it easier for the search engines to find the relevant material. Without internal linking, consumers won’t be able to access your site, leaving their queries unresolved.

Also, remember to link the new pages to any relevant existing page.

3. Mobile-friendly Website

The ultimate goal of your website is to attract more visitors and resolve their queries. Not surprisingly, you need to consider the device people will be using to access the page.

It might interest you that what the website looks like on a laptop is quite different from when people access it on their phones. Hence, the page’s ranking will improve if more people can navigate your site with their latest gadgets.

Understandably, Google’s algorithm considers mobile compatibility essential when delivering ranks. So, it would be best if you curated your SEO tactic to make the web page mobile-friendly.

Mobile compatibility creates a more responsive website, meaning you can update and make changes without hassle.

4. Multimedia

We had previously mentioned how Google doesn’t recognise multimedia, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use them. Having images on different pages improves user experience and is critical to modern SEO methods.

Having relevant images helps break the text into readable paragraphs, assisting readers in skimming through the article. When we talk about ideas, it doesn’t necessarily limit itself to pictures.

You can use graphs and diagrams to describe complicated processes rather than writing long, drawn-out sentences. But when including images, do compress the files; otherwise, they will reduce the page speed.

There are also additional features like alternate texts and video transcriptions that may increase the website’s ranking. These may seem inconsequential, but they prove equally important as you get another chance to include keywords, making the subject relevant.

5. Page Speed

Finally, the featured snippet, the entity, and other on-page architecture must load quickly to prevent consumers from leaving. So, if the web page takes longer to load, your ranking will take a hit.

With Google tools like PageSpeed Insights, you can learn to keep the website from lagging. You can control both the site and page speed by removing long lines of code and reducing wait time for visitors.

Additional NLP Tips

This section will discuss how NLP allows you to engage in advanced SEO strategies.

1. Structured Data

This permits you to arrange the information in a tabular form, acting as the blueprint for the website. Along with NLP, it helps increase organic traffic to the page with help from tools like API demos.

Overall, structured data and NLP work together, improving website quality and making it accessible to the search engine.

2. Text Recommendation

NLP also helps in providing adequate text recommendations by finding out what the user is likely to read next. This is the beauty of machine learning, as it gathers information from every word and sentence, storing them in a readable format.

We must mention that using text recommendations helps increase dwell time — the duration between how long you’re on the website and when you exit the page. A higher dwell time means that consumers find the text relevant, spending more time reading your articles.

So, if Google offers better recommendations, the dwell time increases.

3. Redirecting

You should know how, when, and where to redirect a user, increasing the relevancy and authority of your page. It’s a simple algorithm but works wonders in intercepting irrelevant topics while directing people to a page with suitable information. Understandably, it improves the user experience.

4. Topic Clusters

As part of the modern SEO method, people focus on topic clusters rather than keywords. NLP helps you make the website relevant by looking at specific topics rather than only keywords so that consumers have all the information.

As ML is taking significant strides forward, search engines can better understand the world around them. For many marketers, attention has changed to specific portions of text instead of words and phrases.

It proves helpful in establishing the context of the page, as you can explore the topic from various directions. It also becomes easier to interpret different pages’ user intent and relevancy, delivering information in greater detail.

5. Using Simple Sentences

One common mistake digital marketers tend to make is using industry jargon while writing. This alienates the customer from the page, decreasing dwell time and leading to the site falling down the rankings.

A simple technique is to use short, crisp sentences and stick to the topic. Longer sentences may read well when you’re writing, but it confuses visitors. Plus, people don’t have time to read large chunks of texts in contemporary society.

By dividing the topic into clear paragraphs, consumers can skim through the page to find out what they need. Naturally, it enhances the user experience, while search bots find it easier to grasp the website’s theme in the search engine results pages.

Another technique is to use bullet points for better readability, as the topic comes across clearly. It allows both people and search crawlers to judge articles without any hassle, improving your reputation as a brand.

Summing Up NLP For On-Page SEO

If we consider the website a ship, NLP and SEO help steer it in the right direction.

We hope you have all the NLP SEO methods to understand how it impacts online data. But NLP isn’t a crystal ball for success; you must innovate and expand your horizon to stay updated with the latest developments.

If you need assistance with your NLP research or to produce some high-quality content, speak with one of our SEO specialists, and we will help you target keywords that’ll get you to the top of search engine results.

It’s time now to bid you farewell. Take care, and remember to refer to our guide whenever in doubt.

Brodey Sheppard

Brodey is the CEO of sitecentre®, leading his distinguished Australian digital marketing agency using data analytics and Artificial Intelligence in SEO and Paid Advertising. His adept use of machine learning and AI has gained industry-wide recognition, Brodey has received several industry awards for SEO, Web Design and business, including the Young Small Business Champion Entrepreneur 2023 award. With 15 years under his belt, Brodey is amongst Australia’s most influential digital marketers.

Find them on their website: sitecentre®.