The days when keyword cramming would win you pole position in the search engines are long gone.
In fact, today’s Google will actively penalise you for overusing primary keywords on your site.
So what are they looking to see instead?
Well, lots of things.
But particularly things like Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords.
In a nutshell, these are synonyms of (and closely related words to) your primary keywords.
LSI keywords are valued highly by search engines, because they help provide context to what the page is about.
Here’s how it works.
Let’s say you do a search for ‘house’.
How does Google know whether you’re after:
- House – the building
- House – the TV series
- House – the 70s folk rock band from Guildford
- HOUSE – the acronym for ‘Helping Oilheat Users Save Energy’
Tough, right? Not with latent Semantic Indexing keywords.
For example, when Google sees a page containing LSI keywords like this:
… they know the page is about the houses you live in.
But when they see a page like this:
… it can work out the page is about House the TV series.
So how do you work out the best LSI keywords to add to your content?
Here’s an example to explain:
Let’s say your keyword is ‘car repair’.
Put that keyword into Google:
Next, scan the page for bold words and phrases that aren’t your primary keyword.
Here are some examples from my search for ‘car repair’:
You’ll notice Google has picked out words like ‘vehicle repair’, ‘automobile repair’, and ‘mechanic’ in bold.
That’s because Google considers those words and phrases to be VERY closely related to the word I just searched for.
(In other words, they’re LSI keywords).
Now you’re set – simply seed these words throughout your content:
Et voila. Your content is instantly more Google-friendly.
Want more copywriting trade secrets? Stay tuned – I’m working on the next post now.
In the meantime, if you’re looking to boost your website’s SEO, check out my blogging and website writing services.