Rachel Hand — January 18, 2018 When writing great content one of the most important things to remember, and easiest to forget, is that you are writing for real people. Whilst many Marketers spend most of their time focused on SEO targeting and specific keywords, search engines actually prefer content that can be read by a human being. Content still needs to be engaging and having the same word appear in a sentence five times will not help you to achieve this.
This is where Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI comes in to play. LSI is a concept which search engines, like Google, use to discover the true meaning of content using associated keywords. Using words that are similar to your search term throughout your website will help to add context to your work, helping Google to make sense of what your text, and therefore your brand, is actually about.
When Google has a greater understanding of your content, it can direct searchers to it easily and efficiently. Due to this, Google has confirmed that using more LSI keywords will help you in terms of SEO rankings, which makes perfect sense as people are searching for variations on your keyword.
With LSI set to change the way we approach content marketing in 2018, will it actually benefit Marketers? I’ve been researching some of the ways that it can help you and your content marketing strategy.
It has potential to bring more organic traffic.
LSI means that there are ultimately more keywords on your website. All words associated with your original search term could be potential searches which can drive traffic to your website. It’s quite simple, the more keywords you have the more potential traffic you can drive. Also, as Google will perceive your LSI orientated content as good quality it will rank higher and you are 70% more likely to get a click on the first page.
Helps the user experience on a website.
Stuffing your content with the same keyword continually makes it difficult to read, whereas LSI keywords should appear naturally in quality content. Scattering synonyms and variations of a search term throughout your text makes your content more believable. This, in turn, will make it feel much more natural when it is read by your website visitors.
Reduces Google penalties.
Black-hat SEO techniques and keyword stuffing can have a negative impact on your Google rankings. If search engines think that your content is spam for example, it can knock you back down in the rankings rendering your hard work on SEO useless. Using LSI keywords helps you to avoid keyword stuffing and thus, avoid penalties.
Reduces your bounce rate
The whole concept of LSI keywords is based on giving your content background, Google needs to know what you are writing about to help searchers. The English language, for one, has a lot of words with dual meanings which before LSI could be confusing for both searchers and search engines. With the help of LSI, putting your website into context prevents it from ranking for the wrong terms. This will impact your bounce rate positively as your website is relevant for those that find it.
Revive Dead Content
For pages that are no longer receiving a lot of traffic, LSI can help to give them a new lease of life. Rewording content to reduce your keyword density will also increase the chances of Google finding your content based on new keywords. Content that uses LSI ranks faster and gets more page views and so it is a good idea to revitalise your older content.
So, whilst your content should be using LSI keywords anyway, these advantages may make you consider making them a priority when writing blogs, news and website content.
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