I wanted to share this article from Gianluca Fiorelli who explains why semantic search is the answer to ranking in search engines and LLMs at the same time.
Gianluca Fiorelli
This makes perfect sense to me.
LLMs don’t see words in isolation. They see relationships. That’s how Claude or ChatGPT can give you a sophisticated answer to a complex question (even though it's not always correct).
I wrote about semantic search for a client recently. I had a hard time keeping the word count down! It’s a huge topic. And it's so interesting to dig into how semantic search works, not just what it means.
The article I shared connected the dots for me, and I got some important takeaways from it.
- Topical authority is important. Not just because it sounds nice to be 'an authority'. Sites need to put genuine effort into providing solid information hubs and get that trust factor dialled in before they try to sell. (I am interested in sites that are moving content away from their blog and making a resource elsewhere. I’m planning to test this out with a client later this year.)
- EEAT is important. I know EEAT is primarily for YMYL as far as Google is concerned, but more generally, I believe you have to demonstrate that you know what you're talking about for people to trust you - on any topic. When I was managing a team, I always stressed the importance of trying things out before writing about them so you can explain the steps where people are most likely to get stuck.
- Great writers are important. An expert writer is going to naturally add context, which is how you create and expand entity relationships. AI-generated content just can’t hold a narrative thread long enough to explore a topic in the same way.
- High effort is important. Google asks Quality Raters to evaluate the amount of effort to put into content. Even if low-effort content ranks for now, the entire process of retrieving and processing information is moving away from a low-effort process. It needs to involve time, thought, and human input. Cheap AI filler is a poor investment.
Smart businesses are already producing content with a ton of EEAT to make sure entities are covered and there's a high information gain score.
They're investing in quality. And I think that’s one of the reasons why they’re seeing early success in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Google is moving towards a zero click search experience. Sites will need to invest in content to be seen, whether they like it or not.