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Beyond Basic SEO Practical LSI For The Small Business Owner

Written by: Teresa Bohannon

Article Overview: Latent Semantic Indexing(LSI) and Search Engine Optimization(SEO) are just fancy names for good old common sense concepts and strategies. They are surprisingly easy to do and something that the fledgling entrepreneur on a budget cannot afford to skip if they want to succeed online.

Beyond Basic SEO Practical LSI For The Small Business Owner

When you are promoting your business online, you want to do the best possible job of strategically placing relevant content on your site. That is the basic foundation behind using Search Engine Optimization(SEO). Basic SEO is fairly easy to do, however, optimizing to appeal to a Search engine that uses or will use Latent Semantic Indexing is a little more complicated--still mainly just common sense and very easy to do, just not quite as simple as basic SEO.

Optimizing your website for a search engine that uses LSI technology is actually just a matter of pure common sense. Think of it as natural intelligence. LSI technology compares pages from all over the Internet and compiles ranking on not only the keyword for which it searched, but also the presence of "apparently" relevant keywords found in the same article.

Remember you are dealing with a computer, which really does not know if the other words it finds near a particular “search term” are relevant or not. The computer begins by discarding all of the commonly found words that it has been trained to recognize as insignificant, such as a, and, of, that, the, there, etc. etc. etc. and so on. The computer then determines the relevance of the remaining words by using a mathematical formula (algorithm)that ranks words according to how often they occur within the same or similar content or context.

I.E. The more often that the same words occur in a variety of articles on the same topic, the greater likelihood that those words are also truly relevant to that particular topic.

These supplemental words are then seen--according to the algorithm--as “Expected and Customary” for that particular “search term.” Therefore, their presence in an article which also contains the original “search term” increases the ranking of the article as a whole.

To demonstrate practical LSI optimization for your business website I will use kitchen cabinets as an example.

1. Begin by making up a Master List of keywords that would naturally occur in the conversation if you were talking to a customer in person about purchasing kitchen cabinets or remodeling their kitchen.

kitchen cabinets, kitchen cupboard, kitchen hutch, appliance garage, lazy susan, laminate, cherry, pine, mahogany, pantry, kitchen island, etc. etc. etc.

2. Now expand outward on your theme and add other words to your list that would probably also occur in the conversation.

countertops, cooktop, granite, food storage, refrigerator, appliances, stove, oven, microwave, freezer, lighting, tile flooring, etc. etc. etc.

3. Go to Google or Yahoo and put in your basic keywords and see how many others words come up as having been searched for and how often. This will give you a variety of different ideas for focusing your articles.

4. Nothing succeeds like success, so figure out what the leaders are doing and emulate them. Go to Google, Yahoo and MSN or Dogpile and put in your main keywords. Take the first couple of pages of results and click on View Source in your browser. This will let you see the coding they have used, and analyze what sort of optimization these already successful websites appear to be using.

* Which, if any, meta headers is the site using?
meta keyword="?, ?, ?,"
meta description=" ? "
* What keywords or phrases are they using in their title?
* What keywords or phrases are they using between their heading tags.
h1 ? /h1
h2 ? /h2
h3 ? /h3
* What keywords or phrases are they emphasizing in their overall content?
* Count how often their chosen keywords and phrases appear.
* Are there relevant words there that you missed in compiling your Master list?

The methods I have presented here are easy, quick and basic. However, there are also many different software packages and online tools that will help you analyze your site and those of your competitors. You can use these tools as well, or hire the work done by a professional who knows or has thoroughly researched the specifics of your business.

5. Now that you have completed your research, and compiled a thorough Master List, simply start writing articles, blog entries and other webpage content. Write as if you were educating a customer about the benefits of your product and naturally work in your relevant keywords, key phrases and customary and expected supplemental terms just as you would when speaking in person.

6. Post your first group of at least ten articles and submit your site to the major search engines.

7. Continue to write, post and submit a new or revised article or blog entry every day or two and your site will grow naturally, and increase in LSI perceived value and ranking as it grows.

8. Add full or partial “relevant” RSS feeds to your website to increase the amount of available content, however do not rely on them exclusively.

For more information and down to the basics guidance please see my articles on Practical SEO For The Small Business Owner and What is LSI SEO and How Do I Do It To My Website?

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Article Tags: algorithm, basic foundation, business online, business website, common sense, kitchen cabinets, latent semantic indexing, likelihood, lsi technology, mathematical formula, natural intelligence, optimization seo, optimizing your website, presence, promoting your business, relevance, relevant content, relevant keywords, search engine optimization, search term



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