At the start of the SEO era the emphasis was mainly on keywords, html tags, titles, and other on-site factors.  Reciprocal linking was also in fashion where one website owner would trade links with another webmaster at an exterior website.

At first things were not too bad, but once the overwhelming importance of search engine ranking became apparent a cottage industry of “black hat” and “gray hat” software and techniques flooded the market.  Programs such as Traffic Equalizer “scraped” the Internet allowing webmasters to build sites which appeared to have content but, in effect, contained only paragraphs copied from other websites.  The idea of many at that time was to fool the search engines into thinking that their sites were real, and contained valuable content, so that more visitors would be sent to their sites.

It took a few years for the search engines to catch up with what was happening and to change their algorithms.  Once this occurred, the “easy money” days of the Internet were virtually over.  While there are still countless “get rich quick” schemes, as anyone with an email account can attest, now the situation is different.  Today it is very unlikely to find a “back door” to the search engines which will allow for someone to siphon off a significant amount of money.

For the short time that devious techniques were used successfully an enormous amount of money was made.  However, today the trend, out of necessity if nothing else, has turned SEO into a more ethical pursuit.  In some ways it is easier today to optimize your site for the search engines since there, in effect, is only one that counts—Google.  In the 1990s there were seven or eight search engines which were in competition with Google and time had to be spent trying to optimize for more than one. However, that is no longer the case.

Currently the trend by Google is to favor websites built around themes instead of keywords.  Latent semantic indexing, or LSI, as this process is called, is at the forefront of search engine optimization and will be for the foreseeable future.  If you intend on optimizing your website for Google it will be more profitable to concentrate on LSI instead of looking for that elusive secret method for success that is being hawked by the various self-proclaimed gurus.   Quality websites have always been, and probably will always be, the best choice for long-term Internet success.

What LSI is, in basic and non-mathematical terms, is the ability for the search engine to search for websites on the internet the same way a human would. In other words, the search engine looks for relevance and quality, rather than just keywords or links going in and out of the site. Keywords and links were the way the search engines used to do things, which was known as PageRank, but they found that this had a number of weaknesses. Firstly, webmasters or SEO ‘experts’ that cheated would come on top, by simply loading a site full of irrelevant keywords, writing shocking quality, or using link farms extensively. Many sites would just produce further links to other irrelevant sites, all to sell the site itself and make money from traffic or Adsense. The old PageRank system therefore penalized perfectly good sites – sites with good content, or that added content too quickly, or that were new – as it relied on links, votes and keywords. Most internet users have been the victim of many irrelevant sites from search engine top rankings, and so the search engines have been trying to do their best at getting these sites off the rankings to create a cleaner and higher quality internet experience.

Looking at LSI in more detail, it’s easy for us to begin to see how to structure and build our web pages correctly. LSI’s algorithm works by scanning your website for keywords, and then comparing relationships between these passages and keywords. It does this by scanning other websites that have the same keywords (or concentration of those keywords) and finding relating words and phrases. LSI goes so far as to also check grammar, terminologies, spelling and the like on sites already indexed and your website. Basically, what it is doing is checking the overall theme of your website, whether it matches what the user is searching for, and how it ranks to other sites in terms of keyword relevance. The most relevant site wins.

For example, if you search for “cellphone” on a search engine using PageRank, it will display sites that have the highest mention of “cellphone” or links pertaining. But under LSI, a search for “cellphone” displays results of sites that also have the word “mobile phone” or “cellular phone” or anything else that is relevant. What this means is that keyword stuffing into sites and articles will not win you a higher ranking, but quality, relevant content will. Website developers and writers who have been doing website optimization on good ethical and sound quality principles now finally come on top, while irrelevant and rubbish sites are thrown off the rankings completely. The better the quality and relevance of the site, the better the performance.

Optimizing your site for search engines by utilizing the correct keywords is all important. You need visitors to encounter your website after searching the most significant keywords connected to your site. Learn to utilize keyword research tools to discover the most applicable keywords, this is really significant. If you do not possess a software tool such as AdWords Analyzer, or hold a membership in Wordtracker, then I advise you to use the Keyword Tool within Google AdWords.

Make full use of meta-tags with keywords in the page title and description. You likewise need to employ these same keywords on your site’s web pages, just don’t go too far. Get your pages to look ‘natural’ and make sure the theme of your website is consistent.

Google and other search engines’ chief aim is to return the most applicable search results for a rendered search term by rating websites that possess a close-knit, keyword theme relevance, throughout the entire site. If you arrange your website in the proper fashion, once search engines observe your website, they will recognize that it is worth listing and index it at once.

Also, you might look at including a blog on your website in order to give the search engines additional content. Blog posts can become indexed promptly–search engines love them–therefore, posting to a blog as frequently as practical is an outstanding method to gain targeted web site traffic.

RSS feeds are useful too. RSS allows visitors to learn about the most recent news without them having to seek out the information through a Google search. Additionally, as the content changes each and every day, you are able to depend on picking up a lot of frequent visits by search engine crawlers.

Developing links to your internet site is crucial; however, don’t bother requesting links arbitrarily from all over the net. Choose sites that interrelate with your site’s content since Google takes that into account. Once again, stress the theme of your website and pick out link partners who share your main theme.

Optionally, high caliber links can as well be acquired by writing and publishing articles to websites such as EzineArticles.com. There is currently software available which submits your articles to hundreds of article directories at once. Writing an article associated to your website’s subject matter will result in additional visitors to your site and a good increase in link popularity. This is one of the easiest and cheapest strategies you are able to do in order to develop improved search engine results.

In summary, the key to winning in this new era of SEO comes down to quality. Websites that supply important and relevant content will come through; those webmasters who take shortcuts will probably wind up out of the running.

If you wish to establish a perfectly-structured, highly-optimized internet site, or re-work your present site, there is a new software tool that recently came out called SiloMatic.

SiloMatic makes certain all of your web pages are correctly structured in order to rank high on Google and the other major search engines. It will, in addition, link all your web pages correctly in order to prevent “theme bleeding”. This is essential for the best rankings.

You can read all about it right here: SiloMatic

The following definitions are the most common ones found in articles written about Latent Semantic Indexing.If your goal is to rank higher in today’s search engine environment, it is important to understand the new concepts being used.This is a “work in progress” as these techniques are continually evolving.

Latent Semantic Indexing: is the latest attempt by Google, and other search engines, to rank websites based on a more natural, or human, approach. Instead of rating sites using keyword density and links, more weight is now being given to sites that are based around a central theme.

Latent: that which is present but cannot be seen.

Semantic: relating to the different meanings of words.

Analysis: an investigation to determine essential features and relationships.

LSI: the abbreviation often seen for Latent Semantic Indexing

Importance: LSI is here to stay so new optimization techniques must be used which conform to this new technology if higher search engine rankings are to be obtained.

Keyword Stuffing: The practice of using one, or more, keywords over-and-over to trick the search engines into rewarding the website with a higher ranking.
For example: The man walked his dog to the dog park where he saw many other dogs. The overuse of the word “dog” is not natural and is only intended to help the site rank higher for the keyword “dog”.

Keyword Density: the percentage a particular keyword is used in relation to all the words used.
For example: in the sentence above, the word “dog” is used three times out of a total number of fifteen words. The keyword density for the sentence is: 3/15, or 20%.

Themed website: a website built around a central theme using many inter-related keywords.
For example: a themed website about barbecues might be expected to also contain such words as “gas”,” patio”, “starter fluid”, “charcoal”, and “ribs”.

Theme bleeding: a website which contains content not related to the website’s central theme.
For example: a website about travel may contain articles about different countries which, in effect, distract from the website’s core theme.

Importance: old optimization techniques of keyword stuffing and striving for a specific keyword density are no longer useful. Today a new approach is needed–websites must be constructed around themes instead of around individual keywords.

Importance: search engines are becoming smarter with the new LSI technology. At one time it was difficult for a search engine to distinguish between words with the same spelling but different meanings–a polysemy–but those days are over. Today websites must be built using a variety of keywords–synonyms, plurals, different tenses of verbs–anything that helps develop a central theme. The use of lexical databases and other tools can help collect these necessary terms and phrases.

Outbound links: a hyperlink on your website which points to a different website.

Reciprocal Linking: the mutual exchange of links between two websites. In the case of reciprocal linking your site would have both an inbound link from, and an outbound link to, a particular website.

Anchor Text: the clickable text in a hyperlink. If the anchor text is clicked on it will take you to a new site.
For example: instead of a hyperlink in the form of

http://www.LatentSemanticIndexing.com

the anchor text could simply be: LSI

Importance: The days of reciprocal linking are over. It is now imperative to develop inbound links to a number of your site’s internal pages while using a variety of different anchor text.

Boolean: a search method used by search engines which uses three logical operators, “or”, “and”, and “not”.
For example: there could be a search for “dog”, “dog and cat”, or “dog or cat”. This type of search does will return websites based on keywords, not themes.

Taxonomy: the science or technique of classification and categorization.

Dynamic Taxonomy: the process for searching and retrieving information from large, diverse, databases.

Ontology: a rigorous and exhaustive organization of a particular field of knowledge that is usually hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations.

Importance: these terms are mainly for reference and may be useful for understanding articles about search engine methodology.

What LSI is, in basic and non-mathematical terms, is the ability for the search engine to search for websites on the Internet the same way a human would. In other words, the search engine looks for relevance and quality, rather than just keywords or links going in and out of the site. Keywords and links were the way the search engines used to do things but this had a number of weaknesses. First of all, webmasters or SEO ‘experts’ that cheated, would come up on top of the rankings by simply loading a site full of irrelevant keywords, loading the site with much poor quality content, or using link farms. Many sites would just seek out links from other irrelevant sites, only to make money from traffic or AdSense. The old system penalized perfectly good sites, sites with good content, sites that added content too quickly, or sites that were new. Most Internet users have been the victim of many irrelevant sites from search engine top rankings so Google, and other search engines, have been trying to do their best to create a cleaner and higher quality Internet experience.

Looking at LSI in more detail, it’s easy for us to see how to structure and build our websites and web pages correctly. The LSI algorithm works by scanning your website for keywords, and then comparing relationships between the various keywords and keyword phrases which are found. It scans other websites as well that have the same keywords (or concentration of those keywords) and looks for related words and phrases. LSI goes so far as to also check grammar, terminologies, and spelling on sites already indexed in addition to your own website. Basically, what it is doing is checking the overall theme of your website, whether it matches what the user is searching for, and how your site ranks in relation to other similar sites in terms of keyword relevance. The most relevant site will win–it will rank the highest.

For example, if you search for “cellphone” on a search engine under the old system it would display sites which have the highest mention of “cellphone” and/or the most links. But under LSI, a search for “cellphone” displays results of sites that also have the word “mobile phone” or “cellular phone” or any other relevant phrases. What this means is that keyword stuffing into sites and articles will not win you a higher ranking, but that and relevant quality content will.

Website developers and writers who have been using website optimization techniques based on ethical and quality principles will finally come out on top.At the same time, irrelevant and rubbish sites are thrown off the rankings completely. The higher the quality and relevance of the site, the better the rankings will be with the introduction of latent semantic indexing.

However, site developers, while needing to focus on quality content and relevancy, must not completely disregard linking strategies altogether when they are optimizing their sites. LSI means that extensive linking may not win you the highest ranking by itself but LSI still does take linking into account. What is called for now is a new SEO inbound linking technique which should include the following strategies:

1) Keep your links relevant. Ensure your inbound links are relevant to your site’s content and theme. Irrelevant links, or link farms, could drop your ranking.

2) Link from themed sites. Look for inbound links from sites with quality content having themes similar to yours since LSI runs comparison checks between similar themed sites. A link from a non-related site is of little value in today’s LSI environment.

3) Link from higher ranked sites. If at all possible, always look for sites ranked at least as high as yours; better yet, look for sites that are ranked higher than yours. This is the one area of inbound linking that has not changed from the pre-LSI days.

4) Link from current sites. Ensure the site that links to you is up-to-date because LSI now looks for fresh and original content. A site that is not regularly updated will be of little help in optimization.

5) Make sure inbound links do not all go to the same keyword or same page. Have inbound links go to a variety of different keywords and relevant phrases within your website. Also, it is no longer a good idea to have all inbound links go only to your homepage or a link page–it is much better to have them scattered throughout your site.

All five of these factors need to be observed when managing your inbound linking strategies. The days of optimization by having a hundred links to your site from posting the same article in numerous article directories, or by the use of link farms, are over. For many website owners this is welcome news since these ‘black hat’ SEO techniques are considered unethical by many developers who have been creating quality sites all along.

Keep in mind that while there is value in a good, “LSI compatible”, inbound linking strategy, it must go hand-in-hand with a quality website. A high quality site will, in itself, help with higher rankings but it will also help in attracting the type of inbound links you need.

Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI, is a way for search engines to view and rank web pages in a more natural, or human, manner. Behind the scenes the LSI algorithms analyze pages not only for keywords, but also for synonyms and other related words which might be expected to be present. For example, a web page about barbecues, when analyzed with LSI, should logically also contain such related words as “grill”, “patio”, “sauce”, “recipe”, “charcoal” and/or “smokers”. In general, while we do not know the exact mathematical formula used for LSI, we do know that its real function is to determine if the content of a site is of value to the visitor or not.

History OF LSI

Why, and how, did LSI come about?

In 2003 Google purchased a company called Applied Semantics whose software technology was used to extract and organize information from websites in a manner similar to the way that humans might act. The purpose was to help Google match advertisers of Adsense ads with the appropriate web pages where the ads would be shown. Initially, Adsense matched keywords on the pages to keywords in the ads and a website owner earned money for every click he received from an ad shown on his site. However, the problem soon arose that millions of pages were being generated simply to contain relevant long-tailed keyword phrases to capture traffic from Google and the resulting profitable clicks on the ads. Content on these machine-generated pages was virtually non-existent and it was a frustrating experience for the person doing a search to only find spam. The problem for Google at this time was that they could not differentiate between these generated pages and the sites which actually contained valuable content.

More techniques, such as stuffing a page with keywords and using reciprocal linking strategies to increase search engine rankings, appeared on the scene which compounded the problem. However, reciprocal linking was soon discounted by Google and partially by Yahoo and MSN when one-way inbound links became more important in rankings than before.

Changes Brought About By LSI

Themed Sites and Searches

One of the ways LSI has changed the way Googles looks at sites is a shift from “keyword” to “themes”. Today, and in the foreseeable future, it will be more advantageous to build sites around a number of related words and synonyms instead of around a single keyword. Google gives us a taste of how the LSI algorithm works and of what is to come in the following example:

Perform the following test: run a search on Google for the phrase “cell phone” and then run another Google search using the tilde key before the phrase: “~cell phone”; the tilde key is used by holding the Shift while pressing the key just to the left of the number 1 key.

In the first instance, Google will return only the phrase cell phone in bold; however, in the second instance, words such as cell phone, cellular phone, wireless phone, and mobile phone will also be returned in bold.

Humans are not looking for pages that contain specific keywords, they are looking for sites build around a theme.

Anchor Text

In the past, SEO techniques have been to focus on a single keyword, or keyword phrase, for both external and internal links. The thinking was that if one particular keyword was bringing in the most traffic, it should be the one used throughout the site. However, with the introduction of LSI, sites that previously were ranked high because of extensive inbound links based on a single keyword have now found their rankings have dropped.

LSI looks for a more normal approach to linking. Instead of one keyword or keyword phrase being used as anchor text, a variety of anchor text is favored.

Current SEO strategies in light of LSI

Although we don’t know all the ramifications of LSI at this time it is nonetheless important to apply what knowledge we do have to achieve and maintain our desired rankings with Google. The following short list of tactics may help you get started:

1. Develop themed sites on a broad scale rather than centering around one keyword.

2. Instead of keyword stuffing or “keyword optimization”, strive for more naturally worded and written pages.

3. With regards to your keywords, try to include synonyms, related words, plurals, and various tenses whenever possible throughout your site.

4. When establishing inbound links, be sure that they do not all go to the same keyword; have inbound links go to a number of different keywords and relevant terms within your site.

5. Do not bother seeking reciprocal links; inbound links are the key to LSI.

6. Use software specifically designed for achieving LSI goals: click here

For the present, Google is at the forefront of LSI with Yahoo and MSN still giving more relevance to keyword specific indexing; however, look for this to change with all search engines in the near future.