One thing that can make a difference with your search engine optimization efforts is simply understanding what LSI is and why it matters. LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. Although LSI is a complicated part of the Google algorithm, I’ll break it down here into simple and applicable terms.
I will use two extreme examples to explain it. If you write an article about “Apple”, how does Google know what kind of apple you are talking about? The same goes for an article about “Windows”. How does Google almost always get the right search results? Most search engines will add words to your search instead of just searching for a single word. Google uses those words to help them know what results to offer.
Suppose a user searches for “Apple iPad”, but your article does not contain the term iPad. However, it does have the term “operating system” in the copy. Therefore, your content will appear somewhere in those search results. Of course, without the term “iPad”, the item may be deep in the rankings, but it will still be there nonetheless.
Google understood that since it had the term “operating system” in the copy, the article was about the desktop version of the term rather than the guy who eats it. That’s what LSI is all about.
It’s easy to take advantage of this part of the Google algorithm to make your pages more relevant to their eyes. I’ve used an extreme example to explain LSI, but it’s important to apply it when optimizing for almost all keywords.
Google makes it easy for you. They WANT you to make your content as easy to rank as possible and as relevant as possible.
Here’s how to use LSI.
Go to the Google keyword tool here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
Type in a keyword term and search for results in the list that do NOT contain the same form of your keyword. In other words, look for synonyms that Google has understood to be associated with that keyword.
If you search for “supplement” in the tool, you’ll see the keyword “fish oil” listed… and vice versa. Therefore, if your article is about the use of fish oil as a supplement, it is important to use both terms in the article. This is a simple example, but most of the terms in the keyword tool will show related words that you should also add to your content.
LSI is that simple to take advantage of. Basically, it’s just a common sense way to help Google understand exactly what your content is about.