LSI - What and Why

What is LSI?

LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing, is one of the latest weapons that search

engines use to rate websites in order to provide searchers with the best

possible search experience. LSI algorithms evaluate the overall theme of a

website, placing emphasis on quality and freshness of content. A great deal of

importance is given to the way a website is constructed and internally linked.

Preference is granted to those sites which have relevant content pages that

are cross-linked, but general cross-linking between unrelated pages can cause

ranking positions to suffer.

In an effort to weed out erroneous search results, new LSI algorithms evaluate

websites much like a human would. Are the internally linked pages related to

each other in regards to subject matter, or are there pages about car

insurance cross-linked to pages about fishing equipment? Irrelevant

cross-linking is frowned upon and will hurt the ranking of pages.

Incoming links are also evaluated on a theme basis. If incoming links from

related websites link to you, you'll score points. Unrelated incoming links

can detract from your overall ranking score.

In many cases, LSI algorithms use a form of artificial intelligence to gauge

the quality of webpage content. If your content is nonsensical or appears to

be machine generated, your ranking position will suffer.

Why LSI?

In days gone by, a webmaster could attain high search engine rankings by

stuffing a webpage with loads of keywords. You'd find keywords in the title,

headings, image alt tags and generously sprinkled throughout the page content.

Put in enough keywords and you'd convince the search engines to place you high

in the search results pages.

Of course, the fast-buck artists took immediate advantage and easily achieved

top rankings. Garbage pages, stuffed with keywords littered the best positions

in the search engines.

The search engines fought back and started placing more importance on incoming

links than just counting keyword density. The hucksters responded with link

farms - sites that are setup only for the purpose of artificially increasing

the quantity of incoming links. The search engines countered by looking at the

relevancy of incoming links and sites that used link farms saw their websites

with coveted top positions start to plummet into oblivion.

A few enterprising individuals actually formed a syndicate of sorts that

allowed member sites of similar content to cross-link, again falsely inflating

the importance of many websites. A great many people pay nearly $10,000 a year

to participate in such programs, even though those practices may soon become

ineffective.

Why do search engines care about users?

At first thought, many people wonder why search engines even care about users.

After all, the search engines are free to use, so they don't make money when

you search for free mp3 downloads or you look for that latest news story about

the stock market, so why should they be concerned if visitors enjoy their

search experience? Well, search engines do make money from searchers,

indirectly. Take Google for example, with their AdWords advertisements. Those

are the small ads that come up on the right hand side of the search results

pages.

If you happen to click on one of those ads, the advertiser pays a certain

amount of money to Google, so Google makes money for each and every click.

When you consider the huge amount of traffic Google receives on a daily basis

and the large number of clicks on those ads, it comes up to a tidy sum. Of

course, if the search results don't help you to find what you're looking for,

you'll find a better search engine and Google's income will drop.

Google absolutely does not want that to happen, so they're constantly trying

to improve their search results to keep you coming back and clicking those

revenue generating ads. They want to make sure that when you search for a

certain topic, the search results are genuinely related to what you're looking

for.

Change with the times or die

As search engines refine their indexing algorithms, webmasters find it

increasingly difficult to achieve and maintain top search rankings. Keyword

stuffing, cloaking and link farms no longer work. Computer generated content,

quickly and easily producing hundreds or thousands of 'optimized' pages will

no longer fool the search engines. Any underhanded method developed to 'game'

the search engines will not work for long, if at all.

Actually, I think the LSI algorithms are of great benefit to webmasters. Just

build your sites to confirm and you can achieve the top rankings you want

without having to upgrade to the latest 'trick' that works this week but stops

working next week.

Search engines are big business and if you don't play by their rules, you'll

find yourself sitting on the sidelines, so you had better pay close attention

to LSI. If you want high rankings, give the search engines exactly what

they're looking for, then concentrate on running your business instead of

looking for the next blackhat method of getting those fleeting, artificially

high ranking positions.

Article Source: http://www.christiannotepad.com

Carson Danfield is a successful 'Under the Radar' internet entrepreneur and can show you the 'Right Way' to do things.
Want to implement LSI for your website without the steep learning curve? Want LSI that's push-button easy? Get it now at Traffic-Trix.com/SILO3