This leads us nicely into how Google identifies relevance through content on a web page.
In the most basic form, search engines will look at the content of the page to see if the words on that page are relevant to your query, but they’re sophisticated enough to go beyond “exact match keywords.”
Google understands related keywords too. A page increases in relevance with other semantically similar keywords.
For example, if you have an article on how to pass your driving test, you may have subsections on passing your test for for cars, motorbikes, HGV, LGV etc. These are all vehicles and should have keyword overlaps that help connect the topic as a whole.
SEO description examples like “road,” “driving,” “seatbelt,” “safety,” “exam,” and “test,” would all be semantically relevant keywords that can help search engines better understand what your post is about.
Another example would be if you were creating a post on the “best luxury jewellery”, the content of the top ranking pages who almost certainly include the brands Tiffany and Cartier.
Other popular luxury brands would also be present, and likely have jewellery related words like “necklace, diamond, gold, ring, bracelet etc.
Rather than returning results that have the “best luxury jewellery” written 50 times on the page, Google can see which pages are the most relevant to the searcher’s request.
And Google themselves confirm this by saying “These relevance signals help search algorithms assess whether a webpage contains an answer to your search query, rather than just repeating the same question.”