Google’s shift from keyword density to LSI Keywords
In the early days, Google ranked webpages based on keyword density. If your content mentioned “latest fashion trends” numerous times then the older search engine algorithms would consider that your webpage is about fashion trends and bring up your page when the keyword was used in search. And that is why keyword density was important – a few years ago. It is no longer the case.
Now, search algorithms use Artificial Intelligence and this means that no longer is it possible to just stuff your content with a few keywords. The new search ranking algorithms are using Latent Semantic Indexing to decide on the contents topic and relevancy to a user’s search.
What is LSI keyword and How it Helps in SEO
Full form of LSI is Latent Semantic Indexing and LSI keyword is what makes content understandable in the same way to both a machine reader and a human reader. Machine readers are nothing but algorithms that decide on the relevancy of content to feature it in the Answer Box(rich snippets that come in the form of questions at the top of search results) which is a big ranking signal for authority, as well as SERP. Coming in the first 10 results in Search Engine Results Page is when your page content beats out other pages for relevancy to a given search query. All this happens because of LSI Keywords.
Latent Semantic Indexing is a mathematical technique that looks for keywords related to the main keyword. If the search query is “Cars Prices in India”, Google needs to differentiate between the movie “Cars” and the product on sale. It does this by looking at the web of keywords that come together in the content to decide whether it needs to pick up content on different cars sold in India and leave out the story about the animated movie “Cars”.
Another one for the LSI Keyword examples can be this page. If you searched for “LSI Keywords for SEO” then mathematical algorithms will have crawled this page and recognized the LSI keyword web for this term in the content
- Latent Semantic Indexing
- LSI Keywords
- LSI keywords examples
- What is LSI in SEO
- LSI Keyword Generator
LSI Keyword Generator Tools Help Find Right Keywords
LSI keywords are cluster of words that normally occur together for a specific topic. It should not be confused with synonyms. For example, for a topic on “jogging”, synonyms would be “running” or “sprinting” but LSI keywords would be “warm-up exercises”, “running shoes”, “cardio” etc.
Finding LSI keywords for your topic is not at all difficult. LSI keyword generator tools are easily available and their free versions give you enough to start on. The most popular keyword generators are SEMrush and LSIGraph. These tools will give you the additional benefit of monthly search volume for each keyword and the CPC as well as competition for each. They will also let you narrow down the numbers by country. From the list of keywords, choose the ones suitable for your content and you are ready to start writing your topic using these keywords.
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How to Use LSI Keywords in Your Content
The point of using LSI keywords is that it must fit naturally into your content. However, there are a few tips on the best way of including these keywords so that your content gets ranked higher in search results.
- Primary and secondary LSI Keywords: Let’s say you have chosen 5 LSI keywords to appear in your content. The next step is to decide on the frequency each keyword should appear. Those with higher search volume should be included 3 to 5 times. The secondary keywords can appear at least twice.
- It is recommended that your main LSI keyword appear in your Title. Others can be used in the Header tags, such as sub heading H1 and H2 tags.
- If your LSI keyword can be included in the page URL, that would be ideal.
- Ensure that an LSI keyword appears as high as possible in the first paragraph. Also include one in the last paragraph. Distribute the remaining keywords in the content.
- When you write the meta description (for search result page) make sure it includes at least one LSI Keyword.
- Use a suitable LSI keyword in Anchor Tags.
Quality content will keep visitors on your page but getting them to your page is vital. Adding LSI will get your page content understood by search engines and bring you a more targeted audience.
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