Divine Write Copywriting Forum

I'd like to find out what people think of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)? To me it seems like a fancy way of saying that Google is smart enough to factor in similar words when it reads your site. I think LSI is being pedalled 'cos it inflates the importance of SEOs, not 'cos it's something that needs specific attention by SEOs. I could be wrong, but that's my opinion. To me, if your site is legit, then you'll naturally have similar words throughout. That's just what happens.

Thoughts everyone?

Cheers.

It's a little more than synonyms, and delves into site structures, information architecture and the interaction of information on the site. This can take a variety of different shapes and sizes, but essentially it's important to remember that pretty much everything you do on your site can be interpreted by the search engines, e.g. why did you put that paragraph there, next to that other one under that heading, by that image with the alt text, and then link to that page, etc? It tries to create meaning from these sorts of informational structures....

I would say it's this kind of attention that makes a site stand-out from a run of the mill 'SEO'd site'.

Ben

Heya Ben. I'd forgotten this post, written more than two years ago!

I now have a much improved understanding of LSI (thanks largely to your own articles elsewhere!), so I know that you're right, and it's a lot more than synonyms.

But I still kinda question the field of knowledge as it pertains to SEO. I wonder how much use an understanding of LSI really is. Especially for the lay SEO (much less the lay non-SEO). I mean, all of things you mention are bound to be structured in a meaningful, significant way if you create your site for users, and it's helpful, useful content. So is it really worth special attention?

Or have I missed the point? Is it much the same as keyword density (for what that concept is worth)? Is it really a question of tweaking over and above the natural arrangement so that you stand out of those sites that are just natural?

Or is it more for contrived (spam) sites?

An emoticons journey through a latent semantics :

I think people can be pretty slack with making their site's content provide meaning to search engines, and it makes me mad , both regarding how they build them and then organise the information...it seems to end up being higgledy-piggledy

The way that a link relates to a paragraph/page, a paragraph to the page, the page to another pages, and the pages in the same folder, all makes a difference. Some items of consideration have to be consciously thought-out of which is back-end (folder and content organising, etc) which the user isn't typically aware of, and other times it's more obvious via the site navigation, etc.

The important bit

You're right that if a site is carefully organised for intuitive use by it's ideal users then a by-product will be that it is created in a way that also ticks some search engine boxes too...but I think SEO can make this all the more clear and cohesive and can target what the searches are searching for.

As I browse the web though, I see so much opportunity to improve on this, and make it all the more clear in the message it's trying to communicate to search engines. It really comes-down to getting all the ranking factors to semantically work together, far beyond making a simply a usable site, and that makes me happy! And if guys did all that they would be laughing!

Those are my thoughts, speak soon

Ben

Nice explanation. We'll have to talk more about all this! Cheers mate.