What are LSI Keywords?

[James Seward]

Hi Warriors,

James here again. Easy question this time: what exactly LSI keywords?

I came across this word many times and until today I don't know what it means. When you don't know you ask right?

Thanks for your patience, you guys are great.

All the Best
James

[Tsnyder]

LSI = Latent Semantic Indexing.

It's the end of what's been a long, hard day here so I
apologize for saying I just don't have the energy to get
into the explanation right now...

BUT... if you'll google the phrase there are some very good
articles available on the subject.

Tsnyder

[James Seward]

Originally Posted by Tsnyder

LSI = Latent Semantic Indexing.

It's the end of what's been a long, hard day here so I
apologize for saying I just don't have the energy to get
into the explanation right now...

BUT... if you'll google the phrase there are some very good
articles available on the subject.

Tsnyder

Hi Tsnyder,

Yeah I understand I will wait for another warrior with more energy left in the tank, otherwise I will google it.

Best
James

[Matt M]

Hey James,

I have been using LSI keywords for many years before I ever heard of the term.
If you do a search you are going to come up with scientific explanations so I will try my best to explain how I discovered using this before there was a Google.

When I started putting sites together to rank on search engines back in 1995 you could just put up a page of spammed keywords and get it ranked on the leading search engines back then, Webcrawler, Excite, Lycos, and Hotbot but they started figuring out that they had to find a way for their search bots, or "spiders" to be able to tell spammed sites from relevent content sites and started looking into formulas for word usage in topical writing.

This is when Google's math guys came up with algorithms for determining good content from spam and they took off.

Now, as you know, if you write a 400 word article and place a certain amount of keywords within the article or blog post in a way that does not send red flags then your post or article can get ranked but it doesn't mean that the content is any good.

Google, and others have been studying language usage and how there are certain words or phrases that are comonly found with keywords that support those keywords like "dog" and "barking" or "wedding" and "planner", "flowers", "groom", "ring"...

These are related or "latent" keywords that should come up when writing about the main subject.

If I wrote an article about "weddings" without having any of those related or "latent" words in the article then that could be another type of red flag that I am not actually writing decent content pertaining to "weddings"

I started making "companion" sites of related keywords to my main sites and then linking them together and have had great results.

For instance, back to "weddings" there would be a wedding site linked to a "church" site and a "flower" site, a site for "wedding favors" linked to "wedding planners".

When Google, or any other site using LSI finds your related words within your site and then finds related links (LSI links) they see that these are all related in a more natural way and therefore tend to rank you higher.

Not just the "wedding" site, but all of the related linked sites do better.

Hope that helps.

Matt

[mikemcmillan]

In fact, it is now possible to do a keyword search on Google and have pages appear on page one of Google in which that keyword doesn't even appear. Yes--it may be due to a lot of back-links, but using semantically related words to your main keywords will help from an SEO perspecitive--it is especially important to try to use some semantically related word around your outgoing links to a product page.

Semantic relates to words and theri interaction. Latent refers to the quality of being hidden.

[James Seward]

Originally Posted by Matthew Maiden

Hey James,

I have been using LSI keywords for many years before I ever heard of the term.
If you do a search you are going to come up with scientific explanations so I will try my best to explain how I discovered using this before there was a Google.

When I started putting sites together to rank on search engines back in 1995 you could just put up a page of spammed keywords and get it ranked on the leading search engines back then, Webcrawler, Excite, Lycos, and Hotbot but they started figuring out that they had to find a way for their search bots, or "spiders" to be able to tell spammed sites from relevent content sites and started looking into formulas for word usage in topical writing.

This is when Google's math guys came up with algorithms for determining good content from spam and they took off.

Now, as you know, if you write a 400 word article and place a certain amount of keywords within the article or blog post in a way that does not send red flags then your post or article can get ranked but it doesn't mean that the content is any good.

Google, and others have been studying language usage and how there are certain words or phrases that are comonly found with keywords that support those keywords like "dog" and "barking" or "wedding" and "planner", "flowers", "groom", "ring"...

These are related or "latent" keywords that should come up when writing about the main subject.

If I wrote an article about "weddings" without having any of those related or "latent" words in the article then that could be another type of red flag that I am not actually writing decent content pertaining to "weddings"

I started making "companion" sites of related keywords to my main sites and then linking them together and have had great results.

For instance, back to "weddings" there would be a wedding site linked to a "church" site and a "flower" site, a site for "wedding favors" linked to "wedding planners".

When Google, or any other site using LSI finds your related words within your site and then finds related links (LSI links) they see that these are all related in a more natural way and therefore tend to rank you higher.

Not just the "wedding" site, but all of the related linked sites do better.

Hope that helps.

Matt

Hi Matt,

Many thanks for taking your time to explain that to me. I totally understand it from your explanation. Again, thank you.

Best
James

[James Seward]

Originally Posted by mikemcmillan

In fact, it is now possible to do a keyword search on Google and have pages appear on page one of Google in which that keyword doesn't even appear. Yes--it may be due to a lot of back-links, but using semantically related words to your main keywords will help from an SEO perspecitive--it is especially important to try to use some semantically related word around your outgoing links to a product page.

Semantic relates to words and theri interaction. Latent refers to the quality of being hidden.

Hi Mike,

Yeah I get your point. Thanks for the help.

Best
James

[Muhammad Hassan]

Here's how to use a ~ (tilde) in a search on Google to find
keywords that relate to the main word.

The ~ is described as the synonym operator.

You can use the ~ (tilde) to get a list of words that Google considers are related to your main word. The more of these words that are on your page or in your article the more Google will consider that you article or page is about the main word.

Along with ~ you will also need to use a - which stops a word from being used in the search.

For example,

~diet will search for all the pages that have the word diet in them and all the pages that have the words related to diet.

~diet -diet will search for all the pages that have the words related to diet.

When you look at the Google results you will see words that are bolded. These are the other related words.

Not only does Google tell us what words are related it also bolds them which makes it easy to find them.


An example, find words related to diet

Step 1: Go to Google and search for ~diet

Step 2: Have a look at the results at what words are bolded. e.g. diet, eating and meals

Step 3: Put these bolded words after - in the search. Go to Google and search for ~diet -diet -eating -meals

Step 4: Keep repeating Steps 2 and 3 until there are no results. You will get ~diet: diet, eating, meal, recipes, weight, weight loss, foods

This means that the more of the words eating, meal, recipes, weight, weight loss and foods that are in your article or web page the more Google will judge that your page is relevant to diet.

Step 5: Do steps 1 to 4 for the words that you have just discovered. This leads to:

~eating: cooking, diet, dining, eater, eater's, eating, food, restaurants, eat, eats
~meal: dinner, meal, meals
~recipes: cookies, cooking, cooking recipes, diet, food, menu, menus, recipe, recipes
~weight: diet, fat, mass, weight, muscle, strength, pounds
~weight loss: diet, loss, mass, weight, weight loss, weightloss
~foods: diet, food, foods, fruits, recipes, snacks

You now have a lot more relevant words that are realted to the main word of diet.

[tim98133]

I just came across this post. Thanks for your help. I've actually been doing a lot of research on LSI & exactly how to go about finding these "theme" words.

One school of thought is to just write naturally. If you write naturally for people & not search engines the visitors will come! However I've also been looking for a tool (hopefully free) that will help me find these LSI friendly words.

Does anyone have an opinion? Should I just use the ~ symbol? Some of my words are only bringing back 1 or 2 related words. This is the only reason I'm skeptical. Perhaps I’m over analyzing…. Any suggestions?

[Martin.Avis]

Google's tilde search has little or nothing to do with LSI.

The tilde search highlights a few words that Google regard as vague synonyms to the search term, but LSI isn't just about synonyms - it is about family relationships of words and terms.

So, for example, if your keyword was horse riding, a tide search on Google might return such words as equestrian, equine or pony, but a full LSI search using a tool such as my Keyword LSI Spy (you can get a free trial at Keyword LSI Spy - Latent Semantic Indexing Word Finder) will reveal a much broader list including:

riding
horse
horseback
horses
equine
ride
horse riding
trail
equestrian
riders
miles
show
rides
rider
state
trails
ranch
lessons
park
world
stables
saddle
sports
horseback riding

[James Clark]

Hey James,

Here is a nice little tutorial for you. That is all you need, but if if works for you tell them where you got it.

Here is the Link:FREE - LSI Keyword Research Report

You can thank me later,

Jimmy

[kkchoon]

Try my Advance SEO LSI and Keyword Research Guide.