SEO 2.0 – Latent Semantic Indexing

Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI, is not a new concept. LSI If you have been doing SEO on your site, then you have surely spent time researching the keywords and phrases that are the most likely to help your website rank higher on Google than your competitors. High search engine ranking, however, involves more than keyword density and selection. Search engines have become smarter after seeing the opportunity for abuse of their original algorithms, and now rely on a concept called latent semantic indexing to determine rankings.

Latent semantic indexing is an algorithmic determination of the words and phrases used in each section of text and considers the patterns which appear in proportion between words and phrases. The idea is that the quality can be set based on how keywords and phrases are used in relationship to one another. This is a huge improvement over the ‘quantity’ based way that originally looked mainly at density. This allows webmasters to provide high quality content written naturally so they can outrank junk sites that are keyword stuffed. Internet users also reap the rewards  from readily accessible and relevant content.

LSI requires the use of semantically related words on your website to get that all important higher search ranking.Using synonymous words and phrases in the content allows the search engines to truly see the value of your site.LSI considers website relevance by analyzing all of the content and  comparing relationships between words and phrasing. If you build a themed website, this will help your  ranking. Themed websites consist of articles that focus on a central topic. A website about dogs as pets shouold not have a bunch of cat articles – save those for the cat site. Otherwise you have reduced the relevance of your site to the main theme.

Latent semantic indexing evaluates not only the quality of the content but basics such as grammar, spelling, etc. Gone will be teh sites using cheap writers to spawn huge amounts of ‘SEO’ content. Instead, internet users will be presented with the sites that give valuable information they want, while website owners will have a strong incentive to fill their sites with well written, releant content. In short, the days of keyword stuffing are over. It’s time to fall back on good research and good writing in order to get higher search engine rankings.