Latent Semantic Indexing and SEO

We talk a lot about keywords and their importance in Search Engine Optimization, but not nearly enough about LSI even though it is just as important.

This blog is meant to serve as a beginner’s guide to Latent Semantic Indexing. We will go over what role it plays in your search engine ranking and why you should incorporate it into your content.

So, if you’re ready let us get right into it.

LSI: What is it?

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. These are words and terms that are related to the keyword in that they are often used with it or have similar meaning or are simply interpreted as having a similar one.

So basically there are two types of words included in LSI:

• Those that have similar meaning to the keyword
• Those that are often used alongside the keywords for example in a query

When you start typing a keyword in Google search and a drop down list of suggestions appears, the words surrounding the keyword in those suggestions are all examples of LSI.

Why is LSI important

The answer is in the name.

Latent Semantic Indexing allows the search engine to understand what your webpage is about more clearly.

That way, it can index the page accordingly. This might seem like nothing but when Google is able to easily index your page, it boosts your ranking. This is because then it knows that yours is a relevant page when someone looks something up.

Google now shows answers or search results based on the question’s intent.

You can’t just stuff the same keyword over and over and expect to make it to the first SERP. You have to make the intent of your content clear too so that Google can figure out that your page is relevant to the search made.

As voice search gains popularity and becomes more commonly used long tail keywords are being used more frequently.

This means that there is more of a chance of LSI being part of the search. If your content includes it too, it will allow the search engine to understand that your page might have the right information.

How to Find LSI

Although there are free tools available for LSI, you don’t need to go to them always. The Google search results themselves can help you in this matter.

Here are the three places on the SERP that you should look at to find related terms:

• Type in the keyword in the search engine. The drop down suggestions that appear include related words and topics that are often searched.
• Search the keyword on Google and look at the results. Synonymous words in the results will appear in bold. This is Google’s way of telling you why it’s showing you a result. Here you can find LSI.
• Look at the bottom of the page to find related searches. These will contain many relevant and related words too that serve as LSI.

We hope this has added to your understanding of one major factor that helps Google rank your web pages and that you will make changes accordingly.

This content was originally published by MDHOV.

Good luck!