There is a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding relating to what exactly latent semantic indexing (LSI) really is, and also how it affects the way in which search engine optimized articles are written. As an SEO article service I am frequently asked to produce LSI articles - but there is no such thing, only SEO articles. To optimize for the search engines must entail being fully aware of what LSI is, its consequences and how to take full advantage of it. The first thing to be aware of is that LSI is not something article writers do, nor is it something that any SEO guru or marketing firm can achieve. The process of indexing web content using latent semantics is something only carried out by Google. It is the chief method used by Google to analyse articles and web content in order to try to identify how relevant it is, and therefore where it should appear in the search engines. Realising that LSI holds a significant chunk of the key that could open the door to a high ranking listing position, it’s crucial to have a firm understanding of what it’s really all about. The easiest way to understand how LSI works is to understand why it was necessary, and how it has been developed. Back in the early, blissfully innocent and trustworthy days of the internet, search engines used the keywords meta tag to judge the relevance of a page to a particular topic. If the user searched for ‘stainless steel letter opener’ then the search engines would suggest web pages which contained the phrase ‘stainless steel letter opener’ in the keywords meta tag. Of course, very rapidly this idea was taken advantage of by unscrupulous web designers who threw copious mountains of vaguely related keywords into the meta tag, in order to ensure a high profile listing. In this way, a stationer who perhaps didn’t even sell letter openers could have placed this phrase in the meta tag, and ensured plenty of visitors who might possibly be interested in other stationery products. This was a very unworkable method, and so search engines became more clever and more sceptical, using bots and algorithms to scan the content of the web pages. In this way, keywords could be identified, to help catalogue the web page. As the web grew and grew, the search engines became smarter, but so did the web designers, who began cramming keywords into web pages in such a fashion that even a thesaurus entry would be of more interest. So this is where Google’s latent semantic indexing stepped in. Rather than looking for keywords in a page, it looks for semantically related keywords in order to assess the relevance of a page. But - be careful, because semantically related is NOT the same thing as semantically equivalent. What’s the difference between semantically related and semantically equivalent? Let me give you an example. Let’s imagine a web page all about stationery, and one page in particular selling notepads. Semantically equivalent words to ‘notepad’ might include ‘notebook’, ‘jotter’ and ‘journal’. But Google knows that these are simply permutations of the same basic keyword, and so largely ignores them. But semantically equivalent words are those which don’t mean the same as the keyword, but which might well reasonably be used in any document which is on the subject of notepads, such as ‘paper’, ‘handwriting’, ‘write’ and ‘ink’. LSI identifies the main keywords, ignoring those semantically identical words, and instead examines the rest of the article for those words which might be expected to be found in a document on that subject. So, an article about writing articles shouldn’t use the word ‘article’ all the way through (as in this sentence!) nor should it include too many very similar words such as ‘web page’ or ‘web content’. Instead, any SEO article service that understands how to use LSI effectively will make sure that an article about SEO articles will also include semantically related words such as ‘internet’, ‘search engine’ and of course, The Mightier Pen!
Article Source: http://www.articlecontentprovider.com/articlesubmit
Too many article writers are completely misunderstanding what latent semantic indexing is all about, and many people seem to be under the impression that LSI is something an SEO article service can produce. Once and for all, let’s get it quite clear what LSI is all about...
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