What do you think?
Rate this book
Google Semantic Search: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques That Get Your Company More Traffic
Optimize Your Sites for Today’s Radically New Semantic Search Breakthrough “semantic search” techniques are already transforming Google™’s search results. If you want to be found, yesterday’s SEO techniques won’t cut it anymore. Google Semantic Search tells you what to do instead—in plain English. David Amerland demystifies Knowledge Graph™, TrustRank™, AuthorityRank™, personalized and mobile search, social media activity, and much more. Drawing on deep knowledge of Google’s internal workings and newest patents, he also reveals the growing impact of social networks on your SEO performance. Whether you do it yourself or supervise an agency, this is your complete playbook for next-generation SEO! • Learn how Google is delivering answers , not just links— and what it means to you • Profit from Google Now™ and the fragmented, personalized future of search • Prepare for Knowledge Graph™ by growing your online reputation, authority, and trust • Stop using 10 common SEO techniques that no longer work • Discover the truth about Trust Ranking™—and 10 steps to take right now • Go way beyond keywords in today’s new era of content marketing • Strengthen the “social signal” you create on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn • See why the “First Page of Google” is rapidly become obsolete • Drive unprecedented business value from your online identity and influence • Learn how Google captures meaning in unstructured data— and give it what it wants • Plan for all “4 Vs” of semantic Volume, Velocity, Variety, and Veracity • Rapidly transition from technical to strategic search optimization
- GenresBusiness
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 2013
19 people are currently reading
125 people want to read
About the author
David Amerland
35 books199 followersHey Goodreads peeps, drinks are on me. I’d love to be able to do this face-to-face, hear why you’re reading this over coffee (or a beer) and talk about my obsession with sensemaking, and how books rewire our brains and change the world.
Unfortunately, face-to-face is limiting and, most times, impossible. This is why I love Goodreads. Not only do I get to exorcise some of my demons by using my blog here
as a form of therapy, but I also get to answer questions you ask and post my latest news. The books I write take apart the mechanics of human behavior and analyze the building blocks of this world, though some readers interpret them as being about, search, the web, popular culture, and elite soldier mentality.
I believe that everything we do that is sustainable answers a specific need we experience at a basic human level. Search is information retrieval which is needed to help us make sense of what we see in the world (and there is a version of it inside our head), social networks answer our need for social connection and culture is just behavior that is driven by values, filtered through perception and modulated by context.
Digital technology does what technology has always done: augment existing human abilities and amplify human traits. It is no different, in that respect, to the car or the airplane. It challenges us right now because it is new, fast-moving and it impacts many of us at once. It attracts us because we sense the potential it offers for everyone to matter. For lives that are mostly invisible to feel that they belong. That they make sense.
My books are quoted by academics in research papers and used by universities as primers in classes. I try not to take this too seriously otherwise I won’t be able to write another word. What keeps me writing and evolving are the questions you have too: Why? Why are we the way we are? Why is the world the way it is? Why can we not all be better? Why is the struggle we experience so real? Why is everything just so difficult?
You can keep track of what I write by joining my Sunday newsletter.
You can ask me almost anything here and I hope you can join me as I go looking for answers.
Stay true and keep on reading,
David
Unfortunately, face-to-face is limiting and, most times, impossible. This is why I love Goodreads. Not only do I get to exorcise some of my demons by using my blog here
as a form of therapy, but I also get to answer questions you ask and post my latest news. The books I write take apart the mechanics of human behavior and analyze the building blocks of this world, though some readers interpret them as being about, search, the web, popular culture, and elite soldier mentality.
I believe that everything we do that is sustainable answers a specific need we experience at a basic human level. Search is information retrieval which is needed to help us make sense of what we see in the world (and there is a version of it inside our head), social networks answer our need for social connection and culture is just behavior that is driven by values, filtered through perception and modulated by context.
Digital technology does what technology has always done: augment existing human abilities and amplify human traits. It is no different, in that respect, to the car or the airplane. It challenges us right now because it is new, fast-moving and it impacts many of us at once. It attracts us because we sense the potential it offers for everyone to matter. For lives that are mostly invisible to feel that they belong. That they make sense.
My books are quoted by academics in research papers and used by universities as primers in classes. I try not to take this too seriously otherwise I won’t be able to write another word. What keeps me writing and evolving are the questions you have too: Why? Why are we the way we are? Why is the world the way it is? Why can we not all be better? Why is the struggle we experience so real? Why is everything just so difficult?
You can keep track of what I write by joining my Sunday newsletter.
You can ask me almost anything here and I hope you can join me as I go looking for answers.
Stay true and keep on reading,
David
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 14, 2013
David does an outstanding job of pulling back the curtain and revealing the rapidly emerging integrated online-offline future. Behind that curtain semantic search accelerates human relationships and cognition as facilitated by our new collective unconscious, aka information dynamics. Having recently been doing extensive semantic memory and neocortical pattern recognition research, this prescient book was just in time to help me map concepts such as trust from neurophysiological cascades to events that can be appreciated as collective behavior.
Highly recommended for every entrepreneur with aspirations of competing in the relationship marketing future, a place where authenticity, transparency, and trust provide competitive advantages and Google semantic search levels the playing field.
Highly recommended for every entrepreneur with aspirations of competing in the relationship marketing future, a place where authenticity, transparency, and trust provide competitive advantages and Google semantic search levels the playing field.
July 8, 2015
I think the meat of this book -- what you likely picked it up for -- is all in the back of the book. However, if you really want to understand why it's important and how it works, then you need to work through it back-to-front. Don't worry, Amerland does a good job of explaining it for those of us not immersed in the industry. My only gripe (and it's a small one) is that the visual aids are only really helpful when they are screenshots.
December 15, 2013
If you're battling with getting better rankings for your website, this is definitely a book that needs serious consideration.
It is well worth it and puts into perspective how important Google+ is becoming in search.
It is well worth it and puts into perspective how important Google+ is becoming in search.
January 6, 2014
Very insightful book on how Google's semantic search works, without the hard core coding details. Helped me a great deal on finding new ways to create more credibility for my company's products and to enhance our web-presence and improve our organic rankings.
December 28, 2015
Must read for understanding Semantic search and the impact it has on your business now and going forward. Well written with practical and sound advice on how to strategize your web presence in the the new world of SEO.
December 26, 2013
An in-depth but highly practical summary and offering of advice for businesses facing the new world of search. Highly recommended.
August 4, 2015
Good book, clear and helpful for understanding how Google works. Gave 3 stars as the sections about G+ etc are a little out of date.
April 6, 2019
The book is handwavy and too wordy. Seems unedited. The pointless wordiness gets pretty irritating at times. Example sentence "How entity extraction is achieved, using mathematics, is a true marvel of mathematical analysis, governed by logic rules that simulate intelligence and technology, and governed by the hardware that are Google's data centers."
June 17, 2024
David has signed here an outstanding book about Semantic Search. This book is timeless, and I remain surprised that it is not more well-known. I consider it a bible for anyone who wants to learn more about what Search is and how to take advantage of it.
March 6, 2025
To create content for the Web, we have to understand how information retrieval on the Web works in a world shaped by Google’s semantic search. The book by David Amerland explores content discoverability according to the world’s most popular search engine, giving us insights into how SEO fits into content strategy.
Published in 2013, David Amerland’s “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques That Get Your Company More Traffic, Increase Brand Impact, and Amplify Your Online Presence” (what a keyword-laden mouthful!) brought together the technical concept of Google’s semantic search and its significance for businesses that wanted to remain competitive in online and offline spaces alike. The result was a book, which has since reached the status of a bestseller, filled with actionable advice on how to work with and not against the algorithm that rewards high-quality human-centric content with higher visibility on search engine results pages (SERP). Spoiler alert: while David introduces the technical aspects of semantic search, he translates them into marketing and business cases that appeal to any content professional.
That said, some of the terms and platforms mentioned in the book have been phased out since 2013. For this reason, I noted what the author wrote but elaborated on the current situation and included relevant references.
Why should content strategists care about the Semantic Web?
“The moment you launch a website, you’re a publisher,” wrote Kristina Halvorson in the first edition of her trailblazing book “Content Strategy for the Web” (Halvorson, 2009, p. 20). This statement not only emphasizes the importance of following web content good publishing practices but also underlines our responsibility as content strategists to populate the Web with good content.
Content is not written in a vacuum. The second you hit publish on a piece of content, you add it to the ever-expanding repository of human knowledge. It’s up to us to write content that adds another valuable layer to the existing related data and fits into the mental models of our audience, who will be typing into the search bar.
This is exactly the message of Amerland’s book - semantic search is a technology created to go beyond the simple act of information retrieval by interpreting the searcher’s intent and by expanding the results with suggestions and opportunities for serendipitous discovery (Singhal, 2012). It’s been built to elevate useful information above online clutter (the noise, as David describes it in Chapter 7 on social media marketing and search) and outright spam.
Google, the world’s most popular search engine capturing around 91% of the search market share across all devices (Statista, 2024), pioneered technologies that created an unrivalled search experience. It only made sense that the concept of semantic search is taught in the context of the incredible journey that Google’s search algorithm has gone through to shape how we search today (Kopp, 2022)...
This review is an excerpt from my article "Content Strategy Books: A Review of Google Semantic Search by David Amerland".
Published in 2013, David Amerland’s “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques That Get Your Company More Traffic, Increase Brand Impact, and Amplify Your Online Presence” (what a keyword-laden mouthful!) brought together the technical concept of Google’s semantic search and its significance for businesses that wanted to remain competitive in online and offline spaces alike. The result was a book, which has since reached the status of a bestseller, filled with actionable advice on how to work with and not against the algorithm that rewards high-quality human-centric content with higher visibility on search engine results pages (SERP). Spoiler alert: while David introduces the technical aspects of semantic search, he translates them into marketing and business cases that appeal to any content professional.
That said, some of the terms and platforms mentioned in the book have been phased out since 2013. For this reason, I noted what the author wrote but elaborated on the current situation and included relevant references.
Why should content strategists care about the Semantic Web?
“The moment you launch a website, you’re a publisher,” wrote Kristina Halvorson in the first edition of her trailblazing book “Content Strategy for the Web” (Halvorson, 2009, p. 20). This statement not only emphasizes the importance of following web content good publishing practices but also underlines our responsibility as content strategists to populate the Web with good content.
Content is not written in a vacuum. The second you hit publish on a piece of content, you add it to the ever-expanding repository of human knowledge. It’s up to us to write content that adds another valuable layer to the existing related data and fits into the mental models of our audience, who will be typing into the search bar.
This is exactly the message of Amerland’s book - semantic search is a technology created to go beyond the simple act of information retrieval by interpreting the searcher’s intent and by expanding the results with suggestions and opportunities for serendipitous discovery (Singhal, 2012). It’s been built to elevate useful information above online clutter (the noise, as David describes it in Chapter 7 on social media marketing and search) and outright spam.
Google, the world’s most popular search engine capturing around 91% of the search market share across all devices (Statista, 2024), pioneered technologies that created an unrivalled search experience. It only made sense that the concept of semantic search is taught in the context of the incredible journey that Google’s search algorithm has gone through to shape how we search today (Kopp, 2022)...
This review is an excerpt from my article "Content Strategy Books: A Review of Google Semantic Search by David Amerland".
September 17, 2013
Well...if you want things from the Google point of view, and are ready to believe that Google+ is established and the best thing since sliced bread; this book may be of help to you.
Amerland knows his stuff, and Google is THE search engine, but many of things he speaks of aren't even showing up on the radar in our world. I have a Google+ account, have had it for some time, I hardly use it. I find the newsfeed annoying with too much that I had no connection with showing up because some alogrithm thought it was hot stuff. My search result page doesn't look anything like the examples in the book's illustrations--don't know if it's the fact that our corporate browser is not Chrome, and that's certainly a possibility. But not something that I can do anything about.
In the end the book is good for the underlying theory, but our practice is not in that ball park.
Amerland knows his stuff, and Google is THE search engine, but many of things he speaks of aren't even showing up on the radar in our world. I have a Google+ account, have had it for some time, I hardly use it. I find the newsfeed annoying with too much that I had no connection with showing up because some alogrithm thought it was hot stuff. My search result page doesn't look anything like the examples in the book's illustrations--don't know if it's the fact that our corporate browser is not Chrome, and that's certainly a possibility. But not something that I can do anything about.
In the end the book is good for the underlying theory, but our practice is not in that ball park.
February 18, 2015
5 out of 5 stars. Essential reading, carefully informed research and fine writing. Serves one in any field who wants to understand today's semantic search in order for their digital footprint to be synonymous with our real world - and get found.
July 1, 2023
This book played a pivotal role in my career progression, as it introduced me to Semantic SEO and broadened my horizons within the industry. Despite its age, the content remains relevant and accessible, requiring only minor updates. It is a must-read for anyone involved in the field of SEO.
June 29, 2014
Really good book. I feel like I can talk competently about the topics now. It's interesting to see the evolution of information gathering. It's even more interesting to get this information from print media( this book) that will one day expire.
June 27, 2020
Interesting book. I currently work as a technical SEO engineer (http://codever.io) and I find it useful, especially for people who want to approach SEO more professionally. I recommend it to newbies or people who don't have a particular direction in what to do in SEO.
August 31, 2020
A must if you want to understand actual search and Google.
March 4, 2016
Worth every penny.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews