Latent Semantic Indexing Explained – What is LSI?

I’m not going to lie. I don’t get asked this question very often. Most people trying to drive traffic to their website have never heard of this term. However, once you’ve really immersed yourself in the world of search engine optimization, you’ll see latent semantic indexing (LSI) mentioned. It will be right there along with theme Y elevators.

So this article will explain in easy to understand terms what the heck latent semantic indexing is and the easy way to apply it to your website (and it really is easy despite the fact that some people have gone to great lengths to make it sound ultra complicated). ).

Basically, LSI is a way of taking a computer algorithm and letting it understand what the web page is in the same way that a human reading the page would.

Let me give you two sample paragraphs.

If you’re looking for great dog training tips, you’ve come to the right place. We have all the best “dog training” resources on the internet. No matter what type of dog training you need, we have it here. We will make dog training a painless process.

Now consider this:

If you’re looking for great dog training tips, you’ve come to the right place. Whether you’re training a new puppy or looking to advance your agility training, we’ve got the resources you need. Give us a few weeks, and your dog will sit, stay, and come back on command, and you’ll never have to worry about the kind of trouble your dog gets into when you’re not there again. Obedience problems will be a thing of the past.

Tell me, which paragraph is most relevant to you, the human reader, if you are interested in dog training? Paragraph number two, right? And as a person searching for information, you would find more relevant information if the second paragraph ranked higher in search engines.

And that is exactly what latent semantic indexing is. It allows search engines to look at a page and understand the topic and who is covering and discussing it best without having to hire a human to manually read and rank each page.

While there are programs out there to help you get your “theme” right and how to create content silos and a bunch of other stuff, you really don’t need to know any of that. Remember, the goal of LSI is to put the most relevant websites at the top of the search, not just the ones with the optimal keyword density. It is supposed to be more “human” in its ability to understand a page. So this is what you do. Make sure your website pages are written by someone who knows the subject well (I recommend using a human if you have one available). If you’re a subject matter expert, your content will be written in the optimal format for latent semantic indexing without even thinking about it.

If you outsource your content to some guy in India (or wherever) who has never heard of the subject they are writing about, that will be immediately apparent.

Create high-quality, relevant content and latent semantic indexing will take care of itself. Yes, it really can be that simple.