algohunters.com http://www.algohunters.

com/disambiguate-entities/
Jason
Darrell
Disambiguate Entities for Greater Visibility in Search Engine
Results
Two things happened to get me into Search and, as a consequence, Semantic Copywriting. One overnight, the
other by way of gradual happenstance.
A hip operation went haywire. I loathed my 9-5 job. Ill leave you to work out which was the catalyst to which.
Irrespective of how I got here, the result was conclusive. It, too, brandished a double-edged sword:
lack of mobility + HSE non-compliant prescription drugs ruled out returning to a normal job;
if I was to retain dignity after the insurance ran out, I had to seek a job working from home.
As a purveyor of short stories and poetry, I had a smidgeon of a clue about the latter. I was, after all, an active
member in critique forums and Id had poetry published Stateside.
My only doubt lay in the earning potential of such a career. Turns out, that itchy sphincter feeling had roots buried
in much deeper soil.
Everyone onlines a poet, critic or author
Youve never meet one in real life, but online it seems everyones a poet. Every other person you engage is the
next Stephen King or J. K. Rowling. The market is thus saturated. Any chance of replicating the income that 15
years in one industry had amassed seemed remote. And so it proved.
Id toyed with blogging. I had a couple of my own, on Blogspot.com, and a Google Site. When the Adsense on
the Site informed me of the opportunities on oDesk, I thought:
Wow, what happy fortune is this?!
Id no idea back then that Ads render based on scraping third party cookies placed on your hard drive. The Gods,
for all I could tell, were smiling upon me.
So, off I popped to oDesk and began applying for freelance
writing gigs. The first assignments I won paid the princely sum
of $10/500 words.
Each 500-word article would take approximately 3 hours. This
netted down to the handsome remuneration of 2.50/hour in
proper money. Ish. A little less, after commissions.
The 5-Star ratings started flooding in, until one day I received
an Invitation to Interview. Wow, how cool was that?
I got the gig, for a UK webmaster, and my rate trebled
overnight. By now, Id cut down writing a 500-word article to
an hour and a half. In reality, my income had multiplied six-
fold.
Why working to an SEO template is so wrong
Back then, SEO was nothing like it is today. The client had an SEO template that gamed keywords, anchor text
and both internal and external links. I knew nothing of how links worked or what they meant. Depending upon to
whom you speak today, many may venture that little has changed. Bless little me.
Anyhow, I was to write content, add keywords and embed links in the appropriate volumes. Relevant anchor text
would contain the link, which would in turn point to specific pages. On site, this was primarily the Home page;
offsite, theyd point to relevant non-competitor pages. Easy enough, right? Well, I found it to be.
As it turns out, this webmaster had a whole network of sites.
Some were his own. Others, hed built for clients, but had
agreed to continue providing the content to the SEO template.
And, to be fair, that spec saw the absolute majority of his
websites on Page 1 of SERPs.
Wed risen to position 3 for the biggest industry term for
which the website hed engaged me to write was targeting.
That was over the Christmas 2012 holidays. Wed also
achieved a respectable spot on the first page for his second
key phrase.
These were both 60k/month search terms in the UK. Huge!
And wed reached Page 1 SERPs on the bones of a
WordPress template that didnt yet have its commercial feature attached.
Only two instantly recognisable brands with unrivaled marketing budgets outranked us. Fifteen posts per week
and a simple anchor text-oriented linking strategy was all it had taken.
The King of SEO Completely
This combination of actions and results had to vindicate his methods to a naive copywriter, didnt it? And, as a
consequence, I assumed that I must be the King of SEO Content. They seemed reasonable assumptions, based
on Search evidence.
To further that belief, it wasnt long before he commissioned me to write for the majority of his online real estate.
Including his clients properties, I was churning out 54 blog posts, over 30,000 words, per week. Every article
possessed a bespoke industry voice. I approached each topic or news story from a unique angle.
To those ends adopting a specific voice and adding value
little has changed in the way we write today. However,
disambiguation has become more prevalent since Google
released Hummingbird.
Google now has the ability to extract entities with more
confidence. Apart from that, it appraised the actual content
back then in a similar way to today. Only now it uses other
means besides links to gauge authority. But more about that
in Part 2, the progression from this introductory piece.
In the blink of an eye, the SEO landscape changed forever.
Im not talking Hummingbird. Although I wouldnt bet against
some of the semantic updates elements being present back
then.
Hang on; let me clarify that. Whichever algorithm was in use
for disambiguation back then may now have become more
prominent. Better make sure I dont get my correlations and
causations confused, eh? The SEO Police will be on my back otherwise.
Anyway, Ill never forget the way the changes happened. Twice. In a year.
Who invited Mr and Mrs Monochrome?
We went to The Canaries three times that year, so serious were (are) we about moving out there on a permanent
basis.
On two of those occasions, during our vacation the webmasters received new visitors to their sites. Not
customers. Oh, no. These fellas drained the colour from our cheeks to match their own monochrome makeover.
Mr Panda raised queries about the volume of valueless
content websites were publishing. Mr Penguin took offense at
unnatural linking strategies. The effects on the websites and
my subsequent income were devastating.
After the first penalties, the number of articles the webmasters
commissioned to write dropped to 29 per week. In hindsight,
given their quality, this may have been an overreaction.
Following the second wave of penalties, all but one
webmaster surrendered hope of recovering. Again, ignorance
didnt help. Nevertheless, once Id deleted the cancelled
orders, my weekly editorial calendar displayed only eight
assignments.
Boy, did I hate Google back then? But Id soon find out, I was
misdirecting my ire. Flipping it all on its head, the webspam
team probably held a low opinion of the strategies wed used
to rank, too.
What does Google want from authors, then?
It wasnt until I met a real SEO that I understood why the template wed been using had miffed the Panda and
Penguin so. Through his study of patents, my new Sensei also helped me understand what Google wants.
Why such penalties were (are) so severe became apparent at once a true Doh! moment, if ever there was
one.
Google wants a disambiguated web. It wants authors to publish clear, concise content. It wants us to reference
place names, people names and brands; entities, in other words.
We no longer have to emphasise the context in our content with anchor text. At least not for Google to understand
what we mean. Indexers (bots, crawlers) can work that out themselves.However, if we could tell Google what we
think of an entity how we rate it it would find that useful.
As the semantic web unfolds, our opinions count. How weve interacted with others on social media counts. How
we disseminate entities that (could) appear on the Knowledge Graph counts.
One day last week, I had a revelation, an epiphany. It came as I sought to clarify a documents targeted
sentiment. How Google could assign a category to content without even mentioning it, per se, intrigued me.
The reasons, it turns out, owe much to advancements in Artificial Intelligence. How algorithms can learn as they
process information is key to glimpsing where Googles gonna be at in a few short years from now.
But and its a big but we can help speed up that process. We can help bots/crawlers/spiders/indexers learn
faster.
Is Hummingbird as new as all that?
I alluded above that elements of Hummingbird were present all those years ago. Why did Google receive my
content so well and reward it with so high rankings? The topics newsworthiness was no different to the articles
from whence Id taken my cue.
My theory, then. If you approach the news from a different angle,
Google can index topics with greater confidence. Or rather, if you
build a story around the entities within the content, you add a new
dimension.
In my experience, book authors writing for the web are prone to
wordiness. However, if we isolate entities by using them in shorter
sentences, we can help Google understand. The problem is,
there are too few writers who:
understand semantics well enough to convert the masses;
can format content to a standard that will prove
disambiguations advantages in SERPs.
Right now, there are thousands of webmasters posting content
writing jobs on freelance websites. 99.99% of them are wasting
their money.
All over the world, webmasters want cheap content. Well let me tell you, webmaster: Google doesnt!
For sure, you can hire a writer to put together a 1,000-word generic article for $10. But you may as well take that
tenner and place a bet on a 33/1 outsider for all the good that content will do you.
Sorry, who told you not to write for the search engines?
Without testing for Readability, youre in danger of Google exiling you from its results pages. If youre reliant on its
traffic, thats a pretty big deal.
Examining sentiment, taxonomies and entities within content is just as important as avoiding plagiarism. These
tests (NLP, LSI and Readability) will tell you how well youve disambiguated your entities.
If you dont edit under the microscope, how can you give Google the confidence it needs to rank your content
above the rest?
Ill finish Part 1 with a word about unique. According to the Free Dictionary, it means:
Without an equal or equivalent; unparalleled.
So, unique content doesnt refer to copy that squeaks past plagiarism detectors. It means that nothing of the
same ilk exists online.
The challenge disambiguate your entities
Before you come back for the sequel to this article, I issue you a challenge. It goes like this.
You know that piece of online content youve found that youre about to rewrite? Tell me, how will your version
differ from the original?
Are you going to swap a few adjectives, change the tense and rearrange the contents chronology?
If thats all you intend to do, the end product will not be unique. Instead, why not consider:
How can you approach the subject from a different angle?
What benefits can you give to your readership that the contents progenitor missed?
Will you reference any known brands or businesses that are known for one service or another?
How will you make who your brands are/what they do stand out in your article?
What reason does Google have to rank your content above your competition?
Write for your readers, edit for search and social. Write first, edit second.
Ignoring either part of the process will consign your content to the unexplored chasms of cyberspace. Get stuck
out there and no one will ever find you