Csi Miami Or Lsi Google?

Have you heard of LSI?

Latent Semantic Indexing, otherwise known as LSI, is a new way for search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo, to view and rank websites content in a manner much more like you'd expect a human to rank a site. Behind the scenes these new LSI algorithms analyze pages not only for keywords, but also for similar words AND other RELATED words which might be expected to be present.

For example, a web page about golf, when analyzed using LSI, should expect to contain related words, such as "cart", "clubs", "courses", "green", "fairway" etc. 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.

Why, and how, did LSI come about?

A few years ago, Google purchased a company called 'Applied Semantics' whose software was used to organize information from websites in a manner similar to the way that humans might do. Google bought this company so that they could match Adwords advertisers with the appropriate web pages where the ads would be shown as Adsense ads. Initially, Google matched keywords on the webpages to keywords in the ads and a website owner earned money for every click he received from the Adsense ads on his or her site.

However, people are always trying to find quick and easy ways to make money online (and elsewhere) and a problem soon arose that millions of websites were being created simply to contain relevant long-tailed keyword phrases to capture traffic from Google. Content on these, often machine-generated sites,was third-rate at best. Imagine searching for 'Golf' and finding a website with nothing more than advertisements for products, when all you wanted was information about golf. Google could not differentiate between this fake "content" and the sites which actually contained valuable content, with REAL information about what was searched for.

Other 'Black Hat' techniques, such as filling WebPages with keywords and using linking strategies to increase rankings started being used, which made the problem worse still. This reciprocal linking, however, was soon given the now famous "Google-slap" and even Yahoo and MSN started changing their algorithms to make reciprocal links have a far lower 'weight', so they weren't worth as much to the ranking status.

One of the ways LSI has changed the way Google 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.

Latent Semantic Indexing has changed all this, because we humans are not looking for pages that contain specific keywords, we are looking for information about a subject. Remember, realtors talk about "Location, location, location" but internet marketers think in terms of "Information, information, information". After all, without the right content on your site,attracting the wrong visitors will NOT make you any sales, nor will it help he person looking for that information.

In the recent past, Search-engine Optimization has been all about the focus on a keyword or keyword phrase. The idea was that if one particular keyword was bringing in the most traffic, it should be the one used throughout the site, and as often as possible. But now, with the introduction of Latent Semantic Indexing, websites that were once ranked high because of hundreds or thousands of external, internal or reciprocal links based on just one keyword, have now found their rankings have plummeted.

This new system looks for more humanized linking and more humanized thinking.
Instead of one keyword or keyword phrase being used, a variety of words are favored.

Though we don't know what the future holds for search-engines, we do know that the world's information IS being both indexed AND made available to anybody with an internet connection and a computer at an ever increasing rate.

So, for now, what can you do to help get the rankings in the search-engines that you need? Here are a few pointers:

Create themed sites on a broader area, rather than just concentrating on one keyword or keyphrase.

Rather than artificially stuffing your pages full of keywords, write in a more natural style.

Concentrate on the subject matter and stop thinking about the keywords. Make the CONTENT the most important aspect of your articles and posts and include synonyms, related words and plural words.

Spend less time looking for reciprocal links and more time creating inbound links are the key now. Writing quality articles and posting comments on other related blogs are two great ways to get these links.

Google is definitely at the head of this new wave, but MSN and Yahoo are quickly realizing the value of LSI. What does the future hold for search-engines? Hang-on for a moment while I Google that question.

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