What Is Latent Semantic Indexing And Why It Is Important For SEO?

Are you still living in the times when SEO was all about focusing on the exact match keywords? Those days are long gone! Technology keeps on changing & so do our approaches to deal with it. The SEO world experienced a twist right after the introduction of Google Core Update in January 2016, according to which – ‘The pages with user-friendly content will rank for the competitive keywords. On the contrary, the pages with stuffed keywords will go down, no matter how valuable information they possess.” Gradually, Google started focusing on content. Soon, it realized that people were not using synonyms of keywords in the content. For example: If the content is all about ‘Party dress’, no synonymous phrases are being used like –

Party gown, wedding party off-the-shoulder dress, birthday party long dress. This helps Google to understand the context of the content. It’ll now allow you to show your blog to those looking for gowns, off-shoulder dresses & long dresses.

What is Latent Semantic Indexing?

Latent Semantic Indexing means synonyms of the keywords. (Note: All LSI keywords are synonyms, but not all synonyms are LSI). Apart from that, terms related to the keywords are also known as Latent Semantic Indexing. For example: when you type ‘Stress’ in the search bar, you see the following suggested terms:

• Stress Management
• Stress-Strain Curve
• Stress Relief

All these terms are LSI Keywords. These are the terms related to which people have queries. By including these terms, we can make our blog click-worthy.

Latent Semantic Indexing – Synonymy & Polysemy 

Synonymy – These are the types of LSI keywords with synonyms with the same meaning & form precisely the same image in mind as others. For example, the synonym of ‘Roti’ is flatbread. Both have the same sense.

Polysemy – These types of LSI keywords have terms with different meanings. For example: ‘Lacoste’ is an animal & clothing brand. In this case, our LSI keywords would be:

LACOSTE (Animal)	Lacoste ( Clothing brand)
Lacoste Endangered Species	Lacoste t-shirts
Which animal is lacoste?	Lacoste logo
Is Lacoste a crocodile or alligator?	Lacoste t-shirts for ladies

Latent Semantic Indexing Tools

There are many FREE LSI Keyword generating tools. Not everyone knows about them. Be the first to get acquainted with such means:

Answer The Public 

This is among the favorite tools of content writers. It generates topics for the blog. But it is more than searching for titles for blogs. It can help to find high-volume LSI keywords. Type-in the seed keyword in the search bar, and a ton of LSI keywords will show up:

• Keywords beginning with Interrogative words – What, where, how, when, will, which, are, why, can etc.
• Keywords including prepositions – Can, for, with, near, to, without, near, is, to etc.
• Keywords with comparisons – or, and, like, vs, versus, etc.

Not only does it end here. When you scroll down, a different series of keywords starting with consecutive alphabets occurs. This tool is stupendously beneficial if you wish to understand the user’s search intent & make your article or blog search friendly.

TRICK to use this version for FREE:  Free version offers a limited set of searches to a particular IP. But, to extend the number of your searches you can make use of VPN.

Google Trends 

This free tool is super beneficial to know which ‘related search terms’ are most searched by users based on the country. To be more specific, you can decide about the sub-region too. The total percentage of users searching for a particular query corresponds to it.

Please Note Corresponding to some queries; you will see the word = ‘Breakout’. It means the number of people searching for that particular query has risen to more than 5000%. What’s best about this tool is that – it provides many filters to get precise with searches – country, subregion, category & platform.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is the most reliable tool from an SEO point of view. This tool offers various filters to refine the search. But there is one problem with this tool – It shows you a mix of short, medium & long tail keywords. One needs to filter out the long tail keywords on its own.

Please Note: To use Google Planner, you need to set up a Google Adwords Account.

‘Related Searches’ In Google SERP 

Whenever you search for a query, at the end of SERP, you’ll find this section – ‘Related searches. These are the most useful LSI keywords, as google shows them by analyzing its query database.

Tip of the day: Before planning a strategy for your blog, you must include some of the LSI keywords to improve the quality of your blog. The more LSI keywords your blog comprises, the more visitors it’ll get.

Google Autocomplete

Whenever we type our query in Google’s search bar, the drop-down box automatically shows some related terms regarding which users have some questions. Just like ‘related searches’, these are the LSI keywords about which people are interested in gaining the necessary information.

‘People Also Ask’ Section 

This suggestion box type of section presents various long tail keywords that usually possess interrogative form. The researcher needs to find suitable keywords from the list to match the context of his blog. It is quite challenging to rank for these questions because the competition to provide the best possible information for those questions are usually high. But, do not get disheartened, if you’ll provide facts-oriented information to such queries, there are 100% chances that google will make you rank.

Please Note: Do not change the structure or wording of the question. Let them, how they are or you won’t be able to get ranked for them.

SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool

Many SEO experts find the SEMrush keyword magic tool to be the most useful when finding keywords. This tool is paid, but one uses it limitedly in a free version. The only difference between the free & paid version is – paid version gives you full access to keywords, but the free version shows only 8 to 10 keywords.

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

Ahrefs is one of the most useful tools that can provide valuable insights to help boost the rank of your website. Like other tools, this tool also offers a free but limited version. There is a menu at the top named – Keyword explorer. It can help you generate a list of keywords. It requires manual efforts to separate the long tail keywords. It is suggested from an SEO point of view to make use of only those keywords which have lower keyword difficulty & competition but have significant volume. When used wisely, this tool can prove to be of great help.

Why is Latent Semantic Indexing Important for SEO?

When it comes to SEO Toronto, latent semantic indexing is quintessentially essential to give search engines a clear idea of what your content is all about. Besides, the more LSI keywords will be included in your content, the more informative your blog will be & the more visitors or readers it will get. Here, we have mentioned some of the great benefits of having LSI keywords included in the content:

• An excellent strategy to prepare the structure of the blog

Professional content writers found it the most effective way to prepare a blog strategy based on the LSI keywords. It makes a blog informative & creates a story-like flow. Besides becoming user-friendly, the blog also becomes search engine friendly.

• Help Search Engine Bots know where to show your blog. 

Latent semantic indexing keywords help google bots understand the context of your blog. Consequently, it knows the keywords for which your blog is supposed to be ranked.

• Users obtain additional information from your blog.

Having included LSI keywords in your blog, you can help users gain knowledge about additional aspects. For example: if a user searches “Benefits of eating an apple”, you can provide him with additional information by including – ‘What is the best time to eat an apple in a day or , ‘how can you make your kid eat an apple smartly.’

• The quality of blog can be enhanced

If LSI keywords hadn’t been there, people would have continued with the practice of keyword stuffing. For example: If the focus keyword is ‘IVF treatment’, people would have used it multiple times to increase density & make google focus on it. But it is a wrong practice. Since then, LSI keywords have come into existence, and people have started using LSI, which has ended the repetition of focus keywords. So it is with the help of LSI keywords that people use synonymous words without any fear of dropping the rankings. With the support of LSI keywords, we can use In Vitro Fertilization Treatment, Infertility treatment etc.

• A blog can be prevented from becoming spam 

With the help of LSI keywords, people can get rid of the keyword stuffing practice. The evidence has proved that using LSI keywords can do wonders for your content. This practice can help to prevent your blog from becoming spam. Using a keyword more than the required density usually passes terrible signals to Google. And if Google doesn’t scan the keywords in the content, it makes the content lose its chances of ranking for a particular keyword.

• The bounce Rate can be lowered 

If a blog is not stuffed with keywords, it will convey the best possible to the users without making them feel annoyed with the repetition of the focused keywords. Consequently, they won’t feel the need to get out of that particular piece of content. And the bounce rate from your website will get lowered.

Apart from adding LSI versions of keywords in blogs, where can we add them? 

This is an intelligent question. Adding LSI version of primary keywords in blogs merely will not solve any purpose, but if we add them in other places like the following, the SEO ranking will definitely see a boost:

• Page Titles
• Title & Meta Tags
• URL address
• H1 & H2 tags
• Image alt tags
• Initial paragraph of blog
• Anchor texts
• Conclusion

Besides, the web content should also be enriched with LSI versions. Also, when it comes to using focus keywords, they must not be used in exact matches. Because exact match keywords usually end the sense of content. Google also condemned this practice of using exact match keywords.

Does Google Recognize LSI Keywords as a useful tactic? 

John Mueller has refused the existence of this practice, “There is no such thing as LSI keywords –anyone telling you otherwise is mistaken.” Though, LSI keywords don’t exist.” Not only him, but Bill Slawski has also said, “LSI Keywords do not use LSI and are not LSI.”

What are the views of the SEO experts? 

Many SEO experts out there have claimed the effectiveness of LSI keywords. They see it as applicable from the user’s point of view. A user would love to consume additional information about the searched topic. This is why Google includes a ‘People also ask’ section in the SERP. Google does it with the motive of providing in-depth information to the user. If SEO experts think the same way while including such keywords, the content becomes reading worthy.

According to a renowned SEO expert, “Amazon usually makes use of LSI versions of primary keywords & has emerged successful in gaining a huge targeted audience.” We ourselves can validate this finding by cleverly observing various product categories in all the online shopping platforms.

Conclusion

Well, there has been a lot of debate on this topic – ‘Whether to use LSI keywords or not’. Google does not validate any such processes. But SEO experts have gained results by making use of this process strategically. As per our opinion, it’s all about motives – If you are using LSI keywords in abundance to impress Google, you can never solve a purpose. Still, if you are doing it to make the content user-friendly & information enriching, then nothing is better than this strategy.