Recently I attended an online seminar by Aptara, Bridging the Digital Revenue Gap, that focused on the benefits of semantic strategies.
Semantics focuses on the meaning of words. For example, the word orange can mean a color or a fruit.
According to the webinar, “with semantic technologies, content can more easily be
- found
- extracted
- combined
- reused
- monetized”
Here is an example of semantic tagging:
Using classes such as “telephone”, “ingredient,” “name,” “amount,” and “color” gives more meaning to the words. And, having all this data, lets a computer understand the meanings.
In publishing, there is a lot of data in words. Using semantic tagging can help to analyze an audience and predict what customers want, which makes it easier to focus on what to work on next.
When tagging semantically, you should have a list of categories to use, and score keywords based on importance. Netflix is a great example of a company that has benefited from semantic tagging. According to The Atlantic, Netflix has “76,897 unique ways to describe types of movies.” The company used the tags to create algorithms to suggest what people want to watch next, keeping users engaged. And they know exactly how much time you’re spending watching movies or TV shows on their site.
Tags can also be based on sentiment, such as rating words that are positive or negative, can be used to help promote relevant content to the sentiment. An example of a site that uses sentiment is BookVibe, a book recommendation system that uses Twitter.
Having semantic tags can help show related content, which can recommend new content to readers.
Another benefit of semantics is discoverability. Having keywords that fit contextually help search engines, such as Google and Amazon find certain books. Aptara is working on discoverability tools that leads to conversion.
Other benefits include linking, summarization, and reuse. Semantics provide more possibilities. For example, tags can be linked to urls to make the experience more interactive for the reader. Tags can also point to content chunks that can be spun out into new, separate products. An example of re-use could be using semantically tagged math questions as a list of questions about algebra (turned into quizzes or flashcards).
In order to implement semantics successfully, it’s important to have a plan and define the metadata to use. The next step is to deploy and then maintain, meaning update regularly for the best results.
