Semantic-core-site, what is it

Often at the start of Seo website promotion, many people come across such a concept as the semantic core of the site (hereinafter simply CL), in this article we will analyze in detail how to prepare the CL correctly and in quality, what nuances to pay attention to in order to avoid mistakes.

Semantic core (SN) is a database of keywords and phrases that help users find your site in search results. The collection of the semantic core is rightfully considered one of the most important stages of SEO optimization of the site, because the future fate and position of the site in the search results depends on the quality of its preparation. If, rightly, you collect SA, then after a series of works your site will receive an increase in targeted traffic, an increase in the number of targeted actions, as well as an increase in profits.

In this article, we will analyze in detail how to properly and accurately prepare a SA, what nuances to pay attention to in order to avoid mistakes.

What is the semantic core for

When designing a site, many web masters ignore such a thing as a semantic core and design the site conditionally at their own discretion, which leads to gross errors and prevents users from finding the site in search results. Let’s take a look at why you need to build the semantic core:

1. High-quality study of the site structure – SL allows you to design the most complete site structure that will cover all customer demand.
2. Promotion of pages according to the tops of search results – this allows you to optimize each page individually for a certain set search queries in order for the page to rank in the search results.
3. To draw up a plan for the content of the pages – the collected key phrases make it possible to understand what queries the page ranks for. All these keys in direct occurrences, in the form of word forms, must be present on the site. Based on the priority of the pages, technical specifications are formed for writing texts on the pages.
4. Creating automatic linking on the site – all anchors that are added to the site must be formed from the word base of the semantic core.
5. In some cases , the assembled semantic core is used to set up contextual advertising.
6. Clearly understand what queries you need to promote the site for, which of these queries are high-frequency, which are mid-range, and which are low-frequency.

Types of keywords

Before moving on to the numerical values ​​of each type of request, it is worth noting that it is necessary to correctly rank by frequency within each niche separately, because this indicator is affected by seasonality. Each niche has its own potential, for example, to promote the tire niche, high-frequency requests will start with a frequency of 5 000 requests per month, and for example, in the parquet laying niche, high-frequency requests will start from 500 people per month.

High-frequency keywords (HF) are the queries that users enter in the search most often. As practice shows, these are rather short queries, often they consist of 1 or 2 words.

Pros of moving up the treble:

• These keywords provide an opportunity to increase the amount of organic traffic on the site.
• HF queries provide an opportunity for automatic growth for mid- and low-frequency queries.
• Such queries provide an opportunity for recognition brand on the Internet.

Disadvantages of treble promotion:

1. While the process of promoting RF requests is quite expensive, because As a rule, the Top 5 for such queries is occupied by large sites, aggregator sites, which are difficult to compete with.
2. Promotion of high-frequency queries requires quite large investments: both financial and time.
3. Big competition for high-frequency requests makes you constantly keep abreast, monitor the positions of competitors and monitor all the changes that they make on the site.

Mid-frequency (MF) – these are requests that are considered not the narrowest, but not narrowly focused either, they occupy a niche between high-frequency and low-frequency requests. Typically, midrange queries contain specifics (for example, region, color, size, etc.). MF queries are much more difficult to promote than LF queries, only designing the structure and content is indispensable here, in order to promote such queries, it is necessary to increase the external link mass and at the same time use not only direct entries, but also various anchors that describe the page as fully as possible.< /p>

Pros of midrange advancement:

• They have the potential to become high-frequency queries, if they are worked out well, then
• Promotion for mid-term queries makes it possible to pull up positions for high-frequency queries in the search results.
• Give an opportunity to potential customers to get acquainted with the site, its assortment, site structure.

Cons of midrange promotion:

1. They don’t always convert well, nor do they always end up in a purchase.
2. Sometimes mids can become low-frequency queries.
3. Don’t drive much traffic to the site.
4. li>

Low-frequency key queries (LF) – often these queries are also called long-tail queries, because they contain quite a lot of clarifications. Low-frequency requests are usually entered by users who know exactly what they are looking for, who are ready to perform a targeted action – to make a purchase or order a service. To advance in the LF, it is enough to work out the site structure, link between pages, and write content on each page with the necessary entries.

Pros of moving along the bass:

• High conversion – as a rule, customers who come to the site for such requests have already clearly identified their need and are ready to make a purchase.
• Low competition – as a rule, business owners do not focus on this kind requests, it is easy to move along them.
• Promotion of mid-range and high-frequency queries – low-frequency queries provide an opportunity to work out pages, which in the future will have a positive effect on promotion of high-frequency and mid-frequency queries.
• Stable result – once you get into the top results for low frequencies, they will save the results for quite a long time.

Disadvantages of moving along the bass:

• Constant work on the site.
• Inability to estimate financial costs.
• Give a small amount of traffic to the site.

How to correctly assemble the semantic core

Before proceeding with the formation of the SA, it is necessary:

• Analyze competitors, see Top SERPs to determine which competitors are leading in SERPs.
• Think about what keywords you are interested in, how customers can find you in search results.

Next, the most time-consuming process begins – the collection of key queries, from which the semantic core of the site will be further formed, along which the promotion will take place.

There are two ways to collect SPs, we’ll go over them in more detail below.

Collection of SL by competitors

For this approach, you need to select 2-3 competitors, collect using external tools, such as Serpstat or Ahrefs (we will analyze more resources for collecting a long list of requests in the article “Useful tools for SEO website promotion”), the entire database of keywords by which these sites are ranked. It is recommended to take keys for promotion starting with a frequency of 9. Keys with a frequency of less than 9 should not be paid much attention to. after the basic optimization for midrange, treble and bass, keys with a frequency of 1-9 will be pulled up to the top of the search results automatically.

Having collected the initial semantic core of competitors, it is necessary to further assess its quality. First of all, you need to get rid of junk and non-target keywords that got into the CL during the collection.

Junk requests include:

• Mentioning the name of the company, the brand of a competitor.
• Indication of services, goods in which the company does not specialize.
• Non-target geographic queries (cities of other countries, cities, which the company does not work).
• Requests with errors.
• Duplicate requests.

After the CL for the site is collected, it needs to be clustered, because it is not expedient and inefficient to work through documents of such volume manually in terms of time spent and budgets.

Collecting keywords for keywords

With this approach, it is necessary to determine which queries are most interesting for promotion and which queries are generally present in the niche. Next, you need to use any external tool, for example, Serpstat, to collect all the key phrases that contain the phrase / word that we are interested in for promotion.

After long lists of requests have been collected, cleaned of junk requests, the clustering stage begins.

Semantic core clustering, what is it?

Clustering   is a process in which requests that have a common theme that lead to the same page in the search results are grouped into cluster groups.

Each of the received keyword clusters will be used to promote and optimize one page.

There are several clustering methods: Hard, Soft and Middle. Below we will analyze each of them in detail.

Soft clustering – for this method, the most frequent key is used and all the others are selected based on it, i.e. all keys are interconnected by the most frequent key. This clustering method is suitable for news portals, information sites, small sites, because there are errors and errors in this method.

Middle clustering is the middle ground between Soft and Hard clustering. It all starts with the fact that the most frequent phrase is taken and the rest of the keys are compared with it by the number of common URLs, while there is a certain threshold for adding keys to the cluster (usually no more than 10), after which a new cluster segment is formed.

Hard clustering is a clustering in which the frequency key itself is compared with the following keys by the number of common URLs in the TOP-10 search results. This method is suitable for large sites, niches, where there is a lot of competition and where there are a large number of synonymous words. As a result, after this clustering, we get less SA than after SOFT and Middle, but more accurate.

There are many free resources on the Internet that allow you to quickly and efficiently cluster. Let’s take a look at some of them:

1. Coolakov is a pretty handy service that can cluster up to 500 words for free. This service is also convenient in that it immediately displays a list of competitors.
2. Semantist – using this service, you can cluster SL up to 2 000 words. This resource is ideal for clustering adding a new category to the site.
3. Seoquick – using this service, you can cluster up to 40 000 requests, but you should take into account one point, if you use the free version of the application per day, you can cluster not more than 1 000 requests.

Collecting SA in manual mode

With this method of collecting keywords, a specialist manually works through each page of the site, collects semantics for a competitor and for target queries, and then “seats” the collected keys among the pages. This method is very time consuming. On the negative side, it can also be noted that with this option of working out the semantics, the specialist does not have the opportunity to work out and design the structure of the site with high quality, which deprives the site of the chance to have the most complete and extended structure that meets the demand. Collecting SL by hand for existing pages takes place if you need keys here and now for writing content or for prescribing meta tags. At the same time, it is important to understand that in the near future long lists of requests will be collected and the process of generating semantics for the site will be carried out by competitors with a complete design of the information structure.

Conclusions

Ending the article, I want to once again draw attention to the important points in the formation of the SA:

1. The semantic core is a list of all key queries for which the site is ranked.
2. The semantic core should be worked out in the most qualitative way, all the results of Seo website promotion depend on its quality.
3. Use competitor analysis and clusterers to prepare the SA. This will allow quality and accurate design of the site structure.
4. When compiling the semantic core, be sure to take into account the frequency of the keys, be sure to take high-frequency, mid-range, and low-frequency keys into promotion.
5. Use in your work services Serpstat, Ahrefs, Coolakov, etc. they save a lot of time and help in website promotion.