Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is a technique that is used by all major search engines nowadays. Does your website take this into account? How does it influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results?
What is latent semantic indexing?
LSI means that a search engine tries to associate certain terms with concepts when indexing web pages. For example, Paris and Hilton are associated with a woman instead of a city and a hotel, Tiger and Woods are associated with golf.
To find out which other keywords Google finds related to a keyword, search for a keyword and add a tilde in front of it. Google will mark the related keywords in bold on the result page. It seems that Google finds the word "Nokia" related to "phone".
How can Google match keywords with certain concepts?
Google has billions
of web pages in its index.
If Google finds that many
web pages contain both the
word Paris and the word Hilton
then Google might assume that
these keywords are related.
The other words on these pages
could give Google a hint that
this special word combination
is about a woman.
Words that frequently appear
very close to each other could
get a tighter connection.
Google has a lot of data that allows them to calculate
the relation between different
words.
What does this mean for the position of your web pages in Google's search results?
If you want to be listed for certain keywords, you must show Google that your website is relevant to a certain topic. There are several things that you can do to increase the relevancy of your website for a topic:
1. Optimize different pages of your website for different keywords
If you're targeting the search term "used cars" you should
also create pages that are relevant to the keywords "auto", "suv",
etc.
The more pages of your website are relevant to a certain topic, the more likely it is that your web pages will be listed for keywords that are related to that topic. Make sure that your keywords appear in the right elements on your web pages.
2. Get links from semantically relevant pages
If you're selling cars
then the "Cars" web
page that links to your site
should not be about the movie.
Links from topically related
pages will be semantically
beneficial to your site.
A link to your website that comes from a page that contains links to other web pages that deal with the same topic has a greater effect on the rankings of your website then a link from a page that links to totally different pages and your site.
For that reason, it is important that you try to get links from related websites. It is also very important that you submit your website to the right category in Internet directories. If your website is listed in the wrong category, this can have a negative effect on your rankings.
3. Use a meaningful site
architecture
Use a logical system to organize your website content. Create content
sections that deal with different parts of your main topic and make
sure that everything that is related to your topic is mentioned on
your web pages.
Make sure that your web pages are put in the right categories on your
website and that it's easy to find the different categories.
4. Find out why other pages
rank higher than yours
If you ever asked yourself why another page has been ranked higher
than yours although you perfectly optimized your pages for your search
terms then you should analyze
the inbound links of the top ranked pages.
The number and the authority of inbound links are important. However,
it's also important that the links come from semantically and topically
related pages.
Don't focus on a single keyword
when optimizing your pages.
If you want to prepare your
website for advanced search
engine algorithms then you have
to create a website that has
been optimized for many different
but related search terms.
In
addition, it's important that
the links to your website come
from topically related pages
so that search engines put your
website in the right context. Our website promotion tool IBP can help you with both.
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