Synonyms are pretty much as the word says, alternatives to a specific word. They are your secret weapon when it comes to making your content more findable in your search engine.
There are several ways you can use synonyms, they include:
Pure synonyms
These are synonyms in the purest sense, like you would find in a thesaurus.
For example:
Hyper <> High
The example shows a clinical term. It is translating the clinical to plain English.
Other use cases might be academic, financial or legal terms that have plain English variants.
I will discuss this more in a resource on preferred term vs related term.
It’s also used for translating acronyms you might use.
Translation
These are synonyms that translate something complicated into something easier, or vice versa.
They can also be used to translate a brand name to another name if you do not stock a specific brand.
For example:
Coca-Cola <> Pepsi
In this scenario, anyone searching for Pepsi would only see results for Coca-Cola if that is all was stocked.
Localisation
These are synonyms that are used translate dialect.
Please also see Language, dialect, translation and localisation.
For example:
High School <> Secondary School
Most search engines will translate American English to British English, i.e. color / colour.
Synonym localisation is where we are translating concepts from once dialect to another.
Colloquialisms
Colloquialisms are similar to localisation. Where localisation is used to localise dialect, colloquialisms are a local word or phrase.
For example:
Bottom <> Bum <> Arse
Colloquialisms are what help to make search more accessible for people.
Linking queries
These are synonyms are used to create an implied link between search queries, and are a little more complicated to construct and need careful consideration.
For example:
NSAIDs <> Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Ibuprofen <> NSAIDs Nurofen <> Ibuprofen
You can see from the list that this is a combination the previous two types of synonyms.
Let’s break these down:
The first is resolving an acronym. If the page title includes the acronym alongside the full title, it would resolve correctly.
The second is taking a type of NSAIDs using its generic drug name. This would mean anyone searching for ibuprofen would also get a the NSAIDs result. This provides an additional layer of trustworthiness to visitors.
The final illustrates a translation. In this case if the website is a government website and cannot promote brand named products. As Nurofen is a popular brand name of ibuprofen in the UK it’s possible people would search for that rather than the generic name. For this reason, the synonym is being used to translate the term to the nearest content.
