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The trend is gradually shifting towards meaning of the whole site or the connecting theme. One can optimize the site using as many linguistic variations of the themes as possible & wait for SE to make the fresh connections to the theme which can then be incorporated for ongoing optimization.
Let me explain what I am saying.
If you have to explain to a child that sun rises in the east in how many different ways you can explain the concept.
One:
You can explain the whole universe (including the big bang) & try & place the context of sun ,east etc as defined by Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Second
you explain the revolution of the earth around the sun & on its axis to explain the concept.
Third You say (to avoid complexity) that sun remains where it is & the earth spins on its axis & hence the rise of sun in the east.
Fourth You can say that it submerges in the ocean in night & swims back to the shore in the morning( Kids are smarter then that anyways)
There are many other ways to describe it.
What I am saying is that there are very many different ways of explaining the same idea by the usage of words . So we are coming to the level of language, explaining an abstract concept called idea, using words.
Now transporting this analogy into the realm of SEO, traditionally, the search engine softwares being un-intelligent softwares ( with all due respects, they are doing a great job) used to analyse the site in terms of numbers. How many keywords present. Where? They used to assign weights to the locations, density etc etc etc.
However the SE software are getting smarter now. They just don’t do statistical number crunching. They are trying to READ the site & understand the IDEA behind it, that you are describing using words. Once they are able to read the theme/meaning of your web site they will not just produce it in results for the words that you have described it with(your keywords) but also for related user queries.
They will make thematic associations of the user search query (his words & their meaning) & your sites theme (your words & your meaning).
If the concept matches you are ranked on the results page.
So the world of focusing on specific keywords optimization is coming to an end. It is becoming an idea game. Try & describe your site in as many ways as possible.
The users will always out run you in terms of ideas they will use to search for it. SE software will make the association. You will get a fresh idea to describe your web site with. Go ahead optimize for it again.
Do you hear the distant footsteps of the semantic web approaching us.
Googleguy has made comments here recently suggesting that this is the way to go, Brett included it in his 26 steps [webmasterworld.com] and as the basis behind his theme pyramids, yet many of us continue to underutilise this aspect of traffic-building.
Another point is that this area is probably the most under-developed by the SEs themselves, so therefore offers them most scope for big improvements in their SERPs. All the more reason for them to focus on it.
