Article Writing and the Use of LSI - Latent Semantic Indexing

By: Peter Nisbet Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI, is an important component of Google's search engine algorithm, and by understanding its needs and the concept of contextual relevance, you can use article writing to provide you with masses of free traffic.

Let me state right now that there can be no such thing as LSI-compliant content: there is no such thing for the simple reason that LSI is not a tool but an analytical concept, and you can't use an analytical concept to design web page content. It is properly referred to as latent semantic analysis (LSA), although Google uses the term latent semantic indexing because it is being used to index your web pages.

You can. however, utilise the concept when composing your web page content by making sure that you use language that enables the Google algorithm to match your content with the search term used by Google's customer looking for information. In providing a form of explanation of how this is achieved, therefore, I apologise to those that know more about the theory and real meaning of the term LSA who rightly state that a page cannot comply with requirements of LSI, or even that LSI can be used in any way on a website.

Let me explain the meaning of contextual relevance by giving you an example. It is a simple example, and perhaps contrived, but it does explain the concept, and also how you can apply it to improve the listing position of any web page you apply it to. We shall consider a Google user seeking information on 'how to write'.

How to write what? Check up any keyword analysis tool you wish to use, and you will find that the keyword 'how to write' is a very popular one, and it is very easy to use it as the main keyword in a web page on writing. In fact a keyword used by you on your website is no more than a means of you informing search engines of the topic of your web page, and is hopefully the same as the search term being used by the search engine user.

However, the question is 'how to write' what? The visitor might be seeking information on how to write novels, articles for directories, web page content or even newspaper or magazine articles, and each of these require a different approach and objective when writing them. What the concept of LSI does is to look at the text in close proximity to the keyword and use that to determine its meaning. Thus, 'newspaper', 'novel'. 'web page', 'submission' for example, can all be used in latent semantic indexing to index your page in the correct category, so that the pages presented in the SERPS give the search engine users the results relevant to their inquiry.

The real customer of a serach engine is the person using it to find information - to carry out a search. Google's customers are not those people that use Google Adwords to advertise their products, nor are they you, because Google only exists because of that person seeking information. Google's use of LSI makes sure the company is providing its customers with as good as service as it can.

My website offers different examples of contextual relevance, such as how the keyword 'the history of locks' can one of three different things that could not be distinguished by keyword-stuffing. The same is true of the term 'German Shepherd' another commonly used example. Are you seeking information on dogs or how Germans look after their sheep? Does the word 'Alsatian' refer to a dog or a resident of Alsace?

Google had initially been using the concept of semantic analysis ('semantic' refers to the meaning of words) in their Adsense program, where it was used to determine the type of adverts to place on users' web pages according to the topic of the page. However, people began making thousands from Adsense by automatically generating pages of meaningless text into which any keyword could be inserted and make sense to the reader, thus:

"Information on KW is available internet-wide, and KW is used as a keyword in many searches on Google. There is a large number of websites providing information on KW, and an equally large number of people using KW as their keyword in their Google search."

That's just a brief example, but you could use any keyword you can think of as 'KW', and entire web pages would be generated by software designed simply to enter a keyword of your choice in place of KW. Many of these sites received top listings because the algorithms were predominantly keyword orientated, and endless repetition of a keyword would almost guarantee a high listing. I did it myself: I would have a list of 5,000 keywords generating 5,000 single page-minisites from one template. It doesn't take too mnay clicks per page to make a good living from that many pages.

Google stopped it all with LSI. They applied the concept of latent semantic indexing used in their Adsense program to their search engine algorithm, and overnight websites with no text related in context to the keyword were dropped. People's income was decimated and their businesses destroyed - and likely quite rightly, although it wasn't them that made the rules and they had simply used them as they stood at the time.

Hence, for a high listing for the term 'article writing', it would be necessary to make it obvious to the algorithm to what form of articles you are referring. In the case of the German shepherd, you would have to include words such as sheep or wool to impart the meaning of your content to Google. That's LSI in action, and while most people are still unsure what latent semantic indexing really means, and use the term wrongly, if you write your content naturally you should be just fine.

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

About The Author: The concept of Latent Semantic Indexing is an important one to anybody seeking improved search engine listings, and for more information on how to use it for high Google positions check out LSI on Article Services and start getting yourself some more free traffic. This is not a sales page.