This is another post based on some videos I recorded a while ago where I shared on YouTube and LinkedIn some questions I ask myself. In today's text, I ask myself, and share with you, the following question:

What is the process of defining the things that surround us?

I was listening to a podcast and the interviewer asked the person being interviewed how they would define their profession. I then asked myself the same question: How do I define an SEO ? How do I explain that to my mother ?

My profession has the problem of having the same word to define both the field we work in (Search Engine Optimization) and the professional who works in that field, the SEO (analyst, specialist, etc.).

And that's when I started thinking about different ways in which professionals define SEO.

For me, SEO isn't a set of techniques but a strategic vision that needs to be aligned with the objectives of the business I work in, regardless of my role. Some people disagree with me, which is completely natural, and because of that they define the same activity in a completely different way than I do.

People who define SEO the way I do, who see the role of semantics in our work, call SEO semantic. Google pushed us down this path, and the way we define our professional activity changed with this movement.

If you want to watch the video below, I talk more about how this different definition changes the way I (and many other professionals) operate today, unlike the traditional SEO market, but in this text I want to go further.

The problem of defining concepts in information retrieval.

When we talk about entities , the fundamental building blocks of what we call a knowledge graph, generated through the creation of taxonomies and ontologies, we are talking about a problem that must be constantly faced: ambiguity.

How do I know which entity I'm referring to when I mention, for example, the word Jaguar?

• Jaguar can be a car brand.
• Jaguar could be a football team.
• Jaguar may be an animal

Which jaguar are you talking about? Through context, we naturally and almost instantly disambiguate. This big word also has several meanings, depending on the area of ​​knowledge dealing with it; for example, disambiguation in linguistics is linked to "the process of explaining a message that has more than one meaning. An ambiguous term is, therefore, one that conveys a confusing message or instruction and can be interpreted in more than one way."

According to Wikipedia:

Disambiguation is used in writing, speech, sign language, and even computerized systems — when two objects (or actions, or adjectives, including concrete and abstract terms) have the same name.

Disambiguation in Wikipedia

If you access Wikipedia, you've probably seen the pages . They refer to the same term that can generate more than one possible interpretation (distinct concepts) depending on the context, and are created to organize the links and information for the pages with the exact meaning of each one.

Define and help retrieve information.

Correctly defining the concepts and entities you use in your content is one of the best ways to ensure that the algorithms truly understand what you are writing.

To help you with this, I'll give you a tip about a semantic tool:

Sentence Syntactic Analysis – Semantic SEO

Use Semantic SEO's sentence parser and understand how algorithms and AIs interpret the sentences you create!

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/13b6jFMI0SGoqr1hDXhpvg8qEABXpAQKO?usp=sharing

This notebook was created to help writers understand how algorithms and AI models can interpret their sentences. It works by analyzing sentences – don't use paragraphs or entire texts, it won't work – and displaying the understanding in graphs. The main feature is the DEPENDENCY TREE. Analyze how an algorithm analyzes the components of your text and relates them. Change their order and see the impact on understanding.

This post was inspired by a series of short videos I recorded in an attempt to share some questions that came to mind during my studies in SEO, semantic web , ontologies, and taxonomies, which are now related to my work and the methodology I created, called Semantic Workflow , and some thoughts for the future of SEO.