We get asked this question all the time and I suppose the answer hasn’t changed for some time. The way in which the search engines are tracking content however has. When a search engine is asked to search for a service provider, for example to replace a “Flat tyre”, the person looking for the service wants to find a solution, not just information. The way websites rank in the search results depends on the strength of your keywords and how frequently you have used them in the areas of your site that are crawled by search engines. They run algorithms that will seek out the frequency of your keywords and add that to the number of times that your site has been visited and again further to check how often people have linked to your site through recommendations or Backlinks. It all starts with content in this process and the algorithm is using Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI. To embrace the science, you first need to understand the basic principles and that’s important when we try to explain to our clients the benefits of having a cohesive internet marketing strategy when developing great, fresh content. We want to see reward for their efforts.
What is Latent Semantic Indexing?
LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing is a complicated term with a simple explanation. The main concept behind Latent Semantic Indexing is to discover words and phrases that are related in the context of any document or group of documents. Search engines, Internet Marketing Professionals, and Website Designers often use LSI in their day-to-day activities.
Latent Semantic Indexing is the discovery process for finding related terms and phrases. LSI is a mathematical equation that will fold words into a matrix for analysis that will draw out semantically related terms. This equation relies heavily on the context in which any given word is used. For example, if the term “flat tyre” is used in a document, some semantically related terms would be: car, vehicle, repair, wheel, tyre pressure, and wheel brace. You can see that all the words in the list are related to the term “flat tyre”.
The Inner Workings of LSI
The actual work of Semantic Indexing is very complicated and can only be performed by computers running specialised software. These computer programs will build a word and document matrix and run a semantic analysis and output the semantically related terms. These related terms are commonly known as LSI terms. These programs can analyse one document or a group of documents, one website or many websites.
How Do Search Engines Use Semantic Indexing?
Search engines, such as Google, use Latent Semantic Indexing as part of their search analysis, when trying to decide what websites will show up in their search results. The goal of every Search Provider is to provide the most relevant results for any query. For example, if a user searches for the term “flat tyre”, Google must decide what websites or documents are most relevant and display them in the search results. LSI plays a key role in what is returned on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Why is Latent Semantic Indexing Important to Me?
As teams or individuals create content for the Internet, there is often an overriding goal to have this newly created content found by the search engines. To do this, they need to use the terms that are the most related and relevant to their keyword or phrase. If I fix flat tyres, I want to be found for flat tyre repair in my city or town. My internet marketing success depends on the search engines finding my web content and showing that page in the search results when someone types in the query “flat tyre repair Galway”.
What Do You Do If YOU Don’t Have Time To Work This Out Alone?
Well, that’s easy. We help our clients to develop strong keyword strategies and then we can assist them in building great content that is LSI centric. After all, if you are committed to improving the ranking of your website, you’re going to be working on new content all the time, right? Why not work smarter rather than working harder? Allow us to guide you on the science and let the science drive your creativity by providing focus on the things that matter most.
Isn’t it great when everything works in harmony?