This article has been retrieved and updated from a series of posts I wrote last year about the use of semantics in SEO . In it, I try to explain, in a simple way, how semantics applied to the web will transform businesses of all sizes.

Semantic SEO and the new Web of the senses

The Web and Semantics are two perfect partners to transform the Internet as we know it, but there is a challenge to be faced.

A semantic problem

The web, in our time, has a serious problem. It is broken and urgently needs to be repaired.

On one side, we humans, taking advantage of all the benefits of the Internet: reading, listening, creating, sharing.

On the other side, the machines exchange information , transmit data , trying to understand what we create and share, in the best way possible.

Two languages.

These two agents of the Modern Web do not speak the same language.

It's as if, on the human side, we only speak Portuguese and the machines speak Cantonese.

And to achieve the full power of the Web , we need to speak the same language.

This is the reason why the Semantic Web was conceived.

But what exactly is that?

Meanings and Signifiers

Before anything else, we need to go back to basics and define the terms we are using and will be using throughout this article.

Semantics¹ (from the Greek σημαντικός , sēmantiká , neuter plural of sēmantikós , derived from sema , sign), is the study of meaning and focuses on the relationship between signifiers, such as words , phrases , signs and symbols , and what they represent, their denotation .

These terms and meanings are not unfamiliar to those involved in the study of languages. Linguistic semantics studies the meaning used by human beings to express themselves through language .

By adapting and using terms and concepts from this branch of knowledge , we have semantics applied to programming languages , formal logic , and semiotics .

Semantics is often contrasted with syntax , where the former deals with what something means , while the latter focuses on the structures or patterns of how that something is expressed (for example, the relationships between predicates and their arguments). To make a rough comparison, it's like on the web we have ontologies , vocabularies, and domains (related to semantics) and code, schemas data models , which "syntactically" structure the information.

The Relationship Between Semantics and the Web

The Semantic Web is simply a web with all its information organized in such a way that not only humans can understand it, but especially machines can "translate" all the data (texts, images, files, and the relationships between them) into a language that they understand.

The day the same online content can be read by both humans and computers , we will be very close to the vision of the semantic web envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee .

On this day we will be able to use the power of machines for tasks that we currently do manually, collecting and processing information in a way never seen before. But how did this "new web" emerge?

In the second part of this article, we will talk about the history of the Semantic Web , its key players, and how the dreams of these people will build the web of the future.

Semantic SEO is the future.

SEO became semantic when we started working with techniques, technologies, and languages ​​that allow us to create meaning in our content. Innovations like Google's BERT and the use of Knowledge Graphs in search show us that it's no longer enough to do the work the way we did before.

Relating the words we use, connecting them through their standardized meaning, is a premise both for those who create web content and for us, who optimize that content. And SEO is already semantic nowadays!

¹ “ Semantics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sem%C3%A2ntica . Accessed 4 May 2017.