Latent Semantic Indexing in Layman’s and Marketers’ Terms

 

The new SEO Voodoo term that making more appearances these days is the term LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing.

LSI in academic terms refers to methods of accurate data retrieval, or data retrieval methodology.

In layman’s terms, in marketing terms, here’s what is really means.

Search engines like Google want to rank your sites according to what they think you should have on your site in order to rank you well for certain search terms and phrases.

If your site is about dogs, and all the words on your site are about cats, not only does that make for a poor visitor experience, but it also makes for misleading on-page optimization.

By misleading on-page optimization, I mean that you shouldn’ t optimize and design your site title and meta tags to “claim” your site is about dogs when it’s really about cats.

A while ago, a long time ago, on-page optimization was a very critical part of your efforts to rank well in the search engines for certain terms.  Then Google realized that many marketers were gaming the system with meta-tag stuffing and keyword-stuffing their pages to fake the search engines out by making them think that their site was about something it really wasn’t.

After that happened, another change took place and search engines like Google started relying on off-page optimization factors like link building and links in general to determine the popularity of a site. Once SEOs or SEO professionals saw this change take place, they started gaming the system by getting massive amounts of links using linkbuilding services and networks of blogs.

As a result of this, the search engines had a choice to make and let these link builders game the system or make another change.  The change that is now taking place refers to LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing. 

As mentioned earlier in this article, LSI refers to data retrieval and the reason it applies to SERPs and rankings is that search engines like Google are basically just data retrieval systems that find sites that have certain words on them and add them to their index of sites that are about that certain word or phrases.

This indicates a shift towards on-page optimization playing a larger factor than before when it comes to ranking well in the search engines.  With the advent, or coming predominance of Latent Semantic Indexing in ranking factors, the search engines appear to be looking for the best of both worlds by taking into account what relevant and related keywords are on your site, plus what kinds of sites are linking to yours.

The search engines that don’t present the results and sites and SERPs that the searcher is looking for are search engines that are going to lose business, especially with it’s advertisers since they are in the business of presenting the most relevant search results to its users.

What’s the best way to use LSI, Latent semantic Indexing in your efforts to rank well in the search engines?

Do what professional SEO have been telling people to do for years!

• Write and publish quality unique content which will result in getting a natural pace of backlinks to your content
• Use the terminology that is often used when the topic is discussed, so use words, terms, terminology and verbiage that is naturally used when this topic is written about.
• For example, a site about gas grills should probably mention charcol, brisquettes, pool party, Fourth Of July, beer, wine coolers, tongs, meat, burgers, hot dogs, gas grills, electric grills, getting burned etc…
• Those words are words often asosciated with people that use gas grills therefore the theory of using LSI to rank well in the search engines would naturally assume that a site that uses these words on its pages would be found to be most relevant to that niche even though it doesn’t present every possible alternative version of the word gas grill, grille, grills etc…
• Site structure seems to be another factor tha tis having mor emhpasis being put on it when it comes to ranking well, and the term most often used when describing the new site structure site builders should use is called Silo structures.

Can LSI be gamed by marketers?

Yes, and it’s already happening, with some sites and services offering LSI keyword research services, and offering to build silo structured sites, which is another part of the LSI ranking theory for SEO.

Does Link building still work?

Yes, it does but the reason it works well still is that natural link building comes from people linking back to your quality content pieces and usually thes elinks come from appreciative people with similarly-themed sites, therfore those links are relevant and naturally given.

How does one write content that is good enough to get linked to witohut asking?

By writing knowledgeably about your subject matter an din such a way that is resounds well with your readers. 

A lot of marketers that get tons of traffic tell me that LSI is nothing to even be converned about because you should be writing naturally anyways and using the words that come naturally to you you when writing about something you know about.

Here’s an example of how to naturally use LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing in your writing:

If you write a review on a product made by someone, include the product owner’s name in your review because the search engines using LSI in their ranking factors know that most sites that write about this product also mention the owner’s name so including the owner’s name in your review helps your site rank better merely by including a keyword that is associated with that product.