LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing Keyword is a term most commonly encountered while studying Digital Marketing or SEO. But why is it so? Well, we will be exploring this term in this blog post and will also let you know the 7 things you need to know about it.
What are LSI Keywords?
Earlier Google used to rely solely on keyword density to understand the core concept of a page. But now as Google has got smarter, it not only looks for the main keyword but also for LSI keywords as well. They are not synonyms of the main keyword, instead closely tied to it and frequently found together because they share the same context.
Like, if your blog post/content is on “hot chocolate”. Then Google won’t just look how many times and how have you used it in the title tag, image alt text etc. It will also look for related terms like “temperature”, “hot”, “boil” etc. These are nothing but LSI keywords, giving a higher degree of confidence to Google that the page is surely about “hot chocolate”.
But why did Google start using them instead of just the main keyword?
Why Google uses LSI Keywords?
Earlier the core focus was on keyword occurrence due to which keyword stuffing and abusing was becoming an issue. Due to this, Google distanced itself a bit from keyword density, started focusing on LSI keywords too.
Like, a legitimate page on “hot chocolate” would have related words like “temperature”, “boil”, “hot” etc. while a keyword stuffed would have this term, i.e. ‘hot chocolate’ referred to repeatedly.
Another major reason to shift the focus to from the main keyword was to give searchers the most appropriate pages and results to their query and extract the near-to-exact meaning of the web page. This gives Google a better understanding of the user’s query and displays highly appropriate results.
Relation between Hummingbird Algorithm and LSI Keywords
Besides the numerous algorithms adopted by Google for ranking on SERPs, Hummingbird is one such algorithm introduced in August 2013.
What it does is it understands and looks at each word which lies within the context of a search query. In this way, it relates user’s query’s intent with the search results, that is, the meaning, providing only necessary and appropriate to-the-point results.
But how does this help in the improved ranking?
How are LSI Keywords beneficial in SEO and improved rankings?
They help in a better and higher ranking in the following three ways:
- They help learn the overall context of the webpage, thus giving higher ranking if the intent of the user’s query is matched with the context of the webpage.
- If you have run out of keyword usage in your content, then using it more can result in keyword stuffing which is penalizing. But you can use LSI keywords which are not synonyms, instead of similar in context with the main keyword.
- Last but not least, they act as variations to the main keyword. So proper usage of these can help you land on top results or first page for both your main and LSI keywords. Thus, the same effort but better results.
Where and How to find such Keywords?
There are a number of tools to look out, for possible and powerful keywords. Some of these tools are:
- Google Search
Just type in your main keyword and any other LSI keyword will be displayed in bold along with the main keyword which shows you what you can actually use throughout your content.
- Google Auto Suggest
When you type in your query, Goggle’s AutoSuggest tells similar terms users usually look out for. They actually are clustered with your search term in probable patterns.
- LSI Graph
It is a free tool for finding keywords similar in context to your main keyword but by just browsing through all that you get after you type the main one.
And a few more to count.
How to use these LSI keywords?
Just sprinkle them throughout your content with the appropriate density of the main keyword. In the case of synonyms, just substitute them for the main keyword. You can use them in H1, H2, Title, First Paragraph, Image alt texts etc., basically everywhere where you use your main keyword.
How to avoid over-stuffing keywords?
Even using LSI keywords can lead to over-stuffing if used one keyword too frequently. To avoid that, try to use one keyword once or maybe twice only in the whole context.
So we hope you learnt enough to boost your post for the next time!