Ryan DeShazer of Search Insider recently shared his insights on how SEO needs to adapt or in order to stay current with Google’s planned semantic search updates. DeShazer lists three pieces of advice. The first is, “Become a content strategist – technical on- and off-page factors will continue to see a decline in importance. The most compelling and desirable content will win. I can’t help but think how this new thinking gels perfectly with the concept of storytelling and content curation through social media channels. This construct would be the ideal ying-yang relationship to content marketing across search and social channels.”

The second: “Answer questions through content – keyword research will take center stage, and new software applications will undoubtedly be introduced that look to mine intent from raw keyword clusters. Understanding intent will become crucial during this research phase, because content will need to be crafted to specifically answer the questions posed through user queries.”

And finally, “Rally around standards like schema – a legitimate Knowledge Graph may one day render schema obsolete and unnecessary, but it’s the best we have to work with today. And an early adopter opportunity still exists in every industry vertical. By employing schema today, you will become better positioned for semantic search 1.0 and will be at the forefront when future enhancements are introduced.”

Read the rest of DeShazer’s article here.

Image: Courtesy Flickr/ adria.richards