Query-Based Salient Terms (QBST) and Their Effect on Google Ranking

**James Dooley:** Hi, today I'm joined with Paul Trusca and today's topic is about query based terms with regards to salient terms and their effects on ranking. So Paul, why is this important? **Paul Truscott:** Okay, so query based salient terms, this is a Google terminology. It basically, what they are are all the terms and words that Google would expect to see in a piece of content if it were written by an expert. That's probably the easiest way to sum it up. So, as opposed to being written by an SEO who's done a little bit of research on the topic and then come up with a bunch of, you know, terms or used an LLM to write a piece of content. You know the popular content writers out there, they do usually quite a bad job when it comes to QBST. **James Dooley:** So with regards to that, what was the acronym there? **Paul Truscott:** QBST. **James Dooley:** Yes. Query based salient terms, right? So with regards to QBST, right? How do you go about trying to get those salient terms? Because obviously everyone now is going to be watching this and is going to be, we want to implement QBST. How do we do it? **Paul Truscott:** The best way to do it is to define first of all the topic that you're going to write on and then the context. As I always cite K, because all of this has been learned one way or another via him. Not all of it directly from him but all as a result of following him basically. So I'll always credit him for this. So what I would suggest everyone does is to look first of all at what's the topic that I'm going to write on and then from what context. That's super super important. K is always forever saying context is king. Context is everything, right? And it really is because you can write a lovely piece of content and if you've written it from the wrong context, it's never going to rank for the keywords that you're going after. So it's not just about getting. You've got to find the salient terms for the context that you're writing from. So define the context. So if I'm going to write about, I don't know, let's say asphalt paving, right? And I want to write, I'm doing a home service page. I can write from the context of the process of it. I can write from the pricing. I can write from the context of my reputation. So that's a company attribute. I can write from the context of the types of asphalt or the types of paving. I might do more than asphalt and talk about the different types of paving. So there's lots of different context if I'm doing a page on paving that I might write it from. So I've got to define that first. And then I've got to look at, okay within that what are the QBSTs that I'm going to use. The best way to do it, honestly, the easy way if you don't know the topic is Gemini, right? And I always pick Gemini for this because Gemini is in terms of architecture, it's the closest LLM to the ones that Google is using when it actually analyse. So, in other words, I look at, okay, look at who's going to mark my homework, which teacher is going to mark my homework, and go and see if I can get any information out of them. I guess that's the kind of approach. And I found that Gemini has been the best. And how I've ascertained that is simply by going to Gemini on topics that I know very deeply. So I know what the QBST is for those topics and then ask Gemini. **James Dooley:** So with regards to when you're looking for the QBSTs, obviously you've got different attributes on the page which might be different types of, or predicates might be different questions. Are you looking at the QBSTs at paragraph level or just at a page level? Or literally in each H2 section you're like, okay at section level? **Paul Truscott:** Yeah. So you'll have a set of QBSTs which are relevant to the entire page. So they direct the salience of the page. So for example, if you're writing a page on, let me think of something that I know. Let's say portable toilet rental, right? I'm going to be using the word portable toilet rental, restroom rental, portable bathroom rental, or portable toilets, porta potties. I'm going to be using those terms throughout the entire page, every section. But if I'm now processing a section of that page from the cost context, I'm going to be using words like budget, price, affordability, cost, quote. Those type of words. So those now become salient for that topic in that context. So each section is going to be different depending on the context of that section. **James Dooley:** But when we're looking at QBST, query based salient terms, how is this different from just keywords or LSI, so latent semantic indexing keywords and stuff? What makes this different to that? Because it sounds pretty similar. **Paul Truscott:** It does sound similar. Really good question. Okay, so the LSI terms, really the way that the recent Google leak has uncovered is that there's no such thing really technically as LSI terms. What they are is synonyms, hyponyms, hypernyms, holonyms, all the nims basically, and associated words that you might expect to see on a page with a certain topic, but they're different to QBST. So the QBST terms. To give you an example, if we were talking about a shower installation, right? I don't know where I've plucked that from, but if you were talking about shower installation, LSI terms might be shower doors, taps, sink, basin, etc. But those wouldn't be QBST terms. Those wouldn't be terms that an expert would be using to install a shower, right? So they are things you'd expect to see in that room, but they're not relevant to the installation of what we're talking about. So they are different. These are the terms that an expert would use if they were writing on the topic. Terms and words that they would use. Entities that they would use. Really important to pull out all those entities, but don't use too many because now you can start dragging the vector in the wrong way, in the wrong direction, if that makes sense. So make sure the entities you're using are very strictly relevant to the context that you're writing the piece from. And then you're going to be looking at disambiguating terms. If there are any disambiguating terms that an expert might use to clarify what they're saying, those would also be part of QBST. Any industry terms that you might use would be part of QBST. So they're different to keywords. Similar kind of concept, but you could kind of frame it as saying this is the modern day equivalent of keywords really in a sense. **James Dooley:** Yeah. Yeah. I mean for me it's great this information because now I don't really, as part of any of my prompts, I'm always trying to go, how can I get my writers to seem more like expert writers on different topics that we might be writing about always? I'm now definitely going to be getting them to start looking and extracting all the query based salient terms. Because you know, you explained to me the importance of it. It makes complete sense. The shower installation. The tap and all the other stuff isn't really in the context of the installation of it. People might want to know about price, how long it takes and all the rest of the materials and stuff like that. So yeah, query based salient terms is certainly going to be something now that I'm going to try to start implementing for sure. **James Dooley:** Excellent. Well, it's been a pleasure Paul Truss. Nice for everyone and definitely if anyone who's watching this leave a comment in the comment section. Are you using query based salient terms as part of your content writing?