Synonyms Now Recognized by Google

I recently came across a blog post by a fellow SEO copywriter by the name of Liam Bailey that discusses the idea of Google now recognizing certain keyword synonyms, in addition to the keyword or keyphrase itself.

The example Bailey uses is with the terms overseas property and property abroad, citing that Google appeared to be recognizing each phrase as one in the same. And while the writer of this post provided no hard, concrete evidence that this was in fact the case, aside from personal assurance, as an SEO copywriter myself it really made me think.

If Google is in fact recognizing more and more keyword synonyms, how would this change SEO and copywriting in the future? Or would it change it at all? It’s definitely an interesting concept. In my opinion, it would absolutely change the way SEO copywriters approach creating a page of optimized copy.

One of the most frequent obstacles encountered by SEO copywriters, which I also touched on in a previous post, is finding the ideal middle ground between simultaneously pleasing the reader and the search engine. While obviously your ultimate goal is to get a page to the top of the rankings, it’s also critical that visitors to the site actually want to read what’s there. No one wants to sift through 2,000 words of copy or an over-stuffed page that rambles on and essentially makes no sense to find the information they are looking for.

If we as SEO copywriters could now use keyword synonyms interchangeably with primary keywords and keyphrases, this would open up a whole new means of creating highly effective web copy. Not only could more beneficial keywords be incorporated into the body of text, but the quality of the copy would go up substantially, while the risk of keyword stuffing would decrease significantly.

While I’ve yet to find any indisputable proof that this could in fact be the case, it’s a fascinating concept to consider. What do you think?