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What is LSI SEO and How Do I Do It To My Website?

Written by: Teresa Bohannon

Article Overview: Latent Semantic Indexing(LSI) Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is all about words, and I love playing with words. It sounds complicated, but the basics are something anyone can do, and learning how can make or break your online business. To really do business in today's world you need a website. Quite frankly, it is just too easy to do, and the low cost advertising potential is simply too good to pass up. Unfortunately, a website will not do any good at all if no one visits it—which is why you need traffic. Traffic is acquired through free and paid advertising, offline and online promotion and search engine optimization. So exactly what is this new thing called LSI SEO that everyone is talking about, why do I think it is so great, and how can you easily apply it to increase your search engine rankings and traffic?

What is LSI SEO and How Do I Do It To My Website?

To begin with, do not be intimidated by the acronyms. In their own scientific way, Latent Semantic Indexing(LSI) and Search Engine Optimization(SEO) are really just fancy names for good old common sense concepts and strategies.

I purchased my first computer back in 1985. It was a Tandy 1000, and I remember it almost to the day because my youngest son was just beginning to toddle around at the time and immediately slammed his little hands down on my brand new keyboard. I have also been online for well over twenty years now. Yes, even before there was an Internet, I was active on the old dial up Computer Bulletin Board Systems(BBS) with two other female friends that I had met at the local library's Computer Club meetings. We were female computer nerds and proud of it. We had banded together because there was only the three of us and about 100 or so men in the club. They guys were always very nice to us and helpful, but at that time none of us were professionals in the computer field, and most of the guys were, so to them we were cute little aberrations.

We three dreamed of being independent entrepreneurs working together with our computer skills to provide research services for local law firms. It was an idea that was actually before its time, but one that did not work out because I had just started college as an adult student, our fearless leader ended up divorcing and moving back home to Chattanooga, and our third member was also recently divorced and the main breadwinner for her household.

A few years down the road, with both my marriage and college over and done with, the local home shopping channel I worked for went under and I lost my dual job as an online gemstone host and vault manager. Suddenly, I went from the greatest job in the world to needing a way to make money that would hopefully allow me to provide for my young sons. With a little help from those same two girlfriends, I attempted to open my very first virtual business as an online dating service on my very own home BBS. It failed miserably, mainly because very, very few people owned personal computers back then, and women computer owners were still almost non-existent.

Then, a few months later, when the World Wide Web finally came to my home town, I was online with the first ISP to open shop. In fact, I think I was actually one of their first three customers.

One of two my girlfriends from the old BBS days had done her Master's Thesis at Chattanooga UT in Technical Writing and had worked as a Graduate Assistant designing some of the first "real" webpages. She helped me find and open my first hosting account. She did not approve of the domain name I had chosen, believing it to be far too feminine and not nearly technical sounding enough, but I kept it anyway. The other friend helped out by asking her fiancée to purchase me a copy of HTML For Dummies with his employee discount, and offer free tech support when I needed it. Thanks to those two wonderful women, and the men who loved them, one month later Spun Silk Web Design opened its virtual doors and I was in business doing webpages for other businesses.

So I have been in business online for approximately fourteen years now and have worked continuously online to some degree ever since. During most of that time I was working a full time job elsewhere. Plus for six of those years I was a full partner in a second business. To be honest, I considered my offline business interests more humanitarian and more noble, and so for much of that time I merely maintained a small but sustaining online customer base for my custom web design business and was very content to have it so.

Two years ago, all of that changed when my other business interests suddenly changed due to circumstances beyond my control. So, being the workaholic that I am, I immediately returned to the Internet and found that during the years when I had ceased paying close attention, the online world had been revolutionized by a little thing called AdSense. Suddenly, it seemed that everyone wanted to go online and make big money.

I was awestruck by many of the changes. Fortunately, due to my prior experience, I was able to hit the ground running with most of them. This was made easier by the fact that, although the Internet had changed greatly, the basic rules had remained pretty much the same as before. So, I already knew what the basics were and how to do them, I just had to get up to speed on the new technologies and learn all of the fancy new terminology like SEO and now LSI.

SEO - Search engine optimization. Back in the day that meant write unique content and use meta headers with relevant keywords that would appeal to the search engines, plus a killer 25 word meta description that would appeal to the person using the search engine.

It is, of course, a little more complicated than that in this day and age of algorithms and content to keyword ratios. However, the basic foundation is the same. Then as now, Content is King, and Unique Well Written Content, is the Belle of the Ball.

Now, it is true that flash and dazzle software, and videos have recently moved to center stage. Still, those are just sugar coating on top of the basics. All the flash and dazzle in the world and all the funny or touching videos will not generally be discovered if someone, somewhere has not written a darn good or intriguing description of the content. Search engines, for all their fancy algorithms cannot watch a video and appreciate pathos or humor or beauty; because when all is said and done--computers are machines and dumber than dirt unless someone tells them what to do and how to do it.

So even though--depending on how you choose view it--the online video revolution has either dumbed down the Internet or is bringing culture to the masses, someone still has to provide the unique written content to draw attention to the videos and the other flash and dazzle, and someone still has to be able to read and appreciate the subtle nuances of the written word. The computer algorithm is nothing more than a mechanized cataloger programmed to search for recognizable patterns.

LSI - Latent Semantic Indexing. Some people think of this as SEO 2.0. Personally I call it recognizing the precepts of plain old common sense, or as you are perhaps more familiar with hearing me espouse...well presented, or interestingly and uniquely written content.

SEO appeals to a mechanical computerized algorithm based on mere repetition. LSI appeals to a computer that is supposedly "trained" to mimic the thought processes and expectations of an intelligent or cognizant human being, who can and will creatively find 1001 ways to say or enhance the same word or phrase. An intelligent, articulate human, whether speaking or writing will use adjectives, modifiers and synonyms, and a variety of different descriptive supplemental terms.

So LSI is actually very simple. Instead of wasting your time with scrapped content, or unedited Private Label Rights, do what only you can do better than anyone else writing on your business and your topic.

Pick your keyword or words or phrase and use all of the basic SEO techniques and then take it a step further. Learn to love words. Learn to enjoy playing with them. Write naturally, from the heart. Write creatively with a sense of whimsy. Write uniquely from a perspective that only your life experience can provide.

Think of all the words that would naturally appear in a conversation concerning your topic, and use them. Then find new and different contextually accurate and relevant ways to say and enhance the same word or phrase...and do so with a human touch.

It is not a competition for the most technically correct English composition--any machine can do that--and it's not rocket science. It's just folks talking--only one of them happens to be an artificially intelligent computerized fraud pretending to think like a human!

For more information and down to the basics guidance and examples, please see my articles on Practical SEO, and Beyond Basic SEO-Practical LSI For The Small Business Owner.

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Article Tags: adult student, breadwinner, computer bulletin board, computer club meetings, computer field, computer nerds, fancy names, fearless leader, female computer, female friends, home shopping channel, independent entrepreneurs, latent semantic indexing, online dating service, optimization seo, search engine optimization, tandy 1000, time none, two girlfriends, virtual business



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