Search engine marketing professionals adopt a keyword based approach for search engine optimization campaigns. This approach is essentially designed to rank relevant pages of the website for targeted keywords. Some agencies take a step further and employ the long tail keyword strategy by targeting various permutation and combination of the core set of keywords. The benefits of ranking for long tail keywords are well known and widely accepted. But it is definitely not the end of your keyword strategy – it is just a step in the right direction. This overdependence on the narrow range of phrases could be a ‘disaster in making’.

In order to safeguard your website against changes in search engine algorithm, it is imperative that the website content is semantically optimized. Today, search engine optimization is more about relevance than keyword density or stuffing. The root of semantic relevance, of a website’s content to the search queries, lies in the ability of search engines to use “query expansion”. The method of expanding queries may not be implemented with each and every search performed. But as the search engines grow smarter by each passing day, it is almost certain that it will happen for every search performed in the near future.

Query expansion is when the actual search query, entered by the user, is modified before the actual search is performed. It is like building a new query with the intention to enhance the quality of search results presented to the users. Search engines perform query expansion by using techniques such as keyword stemming, correcting spelling errors and/or augmenting/modifying search query by using synonyms (Bill Slawski and CJ have written insightful posts on implementation of query expansion by search engine). For example: If you search for the word “automobile” the search engines could very well return you results both for automobile and cars – the words ‘automobile and cars’ being semantically related. Search engines use query expansion to include more words than what is actually entered in the search box to return search results, and thereby widen the search horizon.

Query expansion can be reversed engineered to your benefit, and give your website a much wider and robust online presence. To get a better understanding of “how”, let us try and understand the concept behind “key stemming” and how synonyms are used to expand search queries.

Keyword stemming is done by stripping any given word to its root. For example: the word “searcher” can be stemmed to its root – search. Search engines now use variations of the root word to return search results. These variations are obtained by using the plural term for the root term, and/or by adding suffixes and prefixes to the root word.

The use of synonyms for query expansion is accomplished in different ways. Synonyms are derived from thesaurus or a lexical ontology or the more advanced statistical machine translation (SMT) method. In simple terms, search engines select synonyms for the searched query based on the ‘context of occurrences’ to present relevant search results.

Incorporating keyword stemming and synonyms in your keyword and search engine optimization strategy can help you expand your online presence. Keyword stemming and synonyms can be effectively used to derive multiple semantically related keywords fr0m the core list of keywords. These keywords can be naturally embedded into the website content and used in other on-page elements (Be sure to complement your on-page efforts with off-page activities like link building). This will not only boost the chances of ranking for your major keywords, but also for keywords that are the result of query expansion. Also by eliminating the overdependence of your website on the rankings for a set number of keywords, you will make your website less susceptible to changes in search ranking algorithm. Don’t just optimize your website for a fixed number of keywords. Employ keyword stemming and synonyms to broaden your keyword base, and reap the benefits.

Needless to say – your business would make tremendous gains as a result of this increased and widespread online presence.