How Do you Generate LSI Keywords? Does Google use LSI in its Rankings?

What are LSI keywords and how do you generate them? Does Google use this method in ranking websites? Where does the term LSI come from? What exactly do they do?

The importance of SEO in improving millions of websites has caused SEO experts to pay close attention to Google’s changes to its algorithms. In this regard, the importance of using LSI keywords in content is also very crucial. But how do these keywords affect your SEO? Do search engines such as Google still pay attention to LSI keywords? In this article, we will answer all these questions.

What are LSI Keywords?

LSI is short for Latent Semantic Indexing. LSI keywords in many different ways are related to the main keywords of your content. LSI keywords are known by search engines to have a huge impact on your website’s SEO.

For example, keywords like “Tuscany bike tour” and LSI keywords “Tuscany cycling vacation” or “bicycle tour in Tuscany” have close meaning to the main keyword. Experts in writing don’t use main keywords that often, they instead rely on LSI keywords.

The History of LSI

LSI is a mathematical approach to improve the accuracy of information identified in related content. This technology was first introduced in the late 1980s. LSI keywords were invented by a search engine expert known as Susan Dumais in Bell Labs. This inventor had done a lot of research on LSI before joining Microsoft.

• LSI, in fact, finds the hidden relation between words in order to improve the understanding of information and recognizes simple and compound sentences. For example, the words “Hot” and “Dog” are both simple and understandable that can be combined with different suffixes and prefixes to change the nature of the sentences.
• If these words are put together, “Hotdog” will have a completely different meaning. So LSI help detects hidden relation between words to help computer/algorithms better understand our content. LSI works best on static content and a set of documents.

In fact, LSI words can be summarized as below:

1. LSI is a technology for information marketing that was invented in the late 1980s to replace the technologies before that couldn’t understand the relationship between words.
2. A particular approach that seeks to understand the meaning and structure of language.
3. Ability to identify concepts and terms related to the main-topic keywords.
4. It’s very useful for a set of static documents.

Does Google Still Use LSI?

SEO experts believe that Google still uses LSI. The reason for this is that they believe Google uses synonymous words related to the meaning of keywords. LSI is old technology and this doesn’t mean that Google still uses synonyms and semantic search. Google likes synonyms and related words but doesn’t call them LSI. Using these terms can be misleading and confusing for search engines such as Google.

LSI has definitely played a significant role in the development of search engines and semantic searches. As Roger Montti said, LSI is the wheel of search engines, but there is no need to use them in today’s world. No doubt Google wants to understand any content. A semantic field is an essential part of this approach. However, this jump is quite convincing that the word “meaning” exists in semantic search and LSI.

• There are many reasons why Google goes beyond LSI technology and uses more advanced technology to retrieve information. Google’s semantic search engines, trade naturally with content perception and retrieval. But this doesn’t mean that Google uses LSI technology.
• JR Oakes held a seminar in late 2017 about TechSEO Boost which cleared the air about the retrieval of modern information and explained approaches to make Google’s algorithm more understandable. The subject of his speech was “Fun with Machine”. How machine learning is shaping Google and technical SEO.

Don’t Focus on LSI and Avoid Spamming Keywords

Although semantic search engines continue to have many challenges in understanding the content of websites, the more Google improve its algorithm, the better the content will be published. So, it’s best to prioritize your website’s audience then focus on your SEO. Using keywords and improving your SEO is still important. But more importantly, writing useful content for your audience is better.

 Also, to optimize your website to match Google algorithms, there are better ways other than using LSI and duplicated keywords. For example, structured data is one of the modern and popular ways to optimize your SEO.

Users use this method to add tags to their data. This will increase the speed of indexing their content by search engines. This method, makes the content to be displayed on different search results pages. The concept of co-occurrence is also very important in Google’s algorithm because search engines look for words that are semantically connected.

• You should keep in mind that, even if Google doesn’t use LSI keywords, the use of words that are semantically connected in your content will not harm your SEO.
• Another important point that you should know is that excessive use of keywords will have a negative impact on your content and your website may be considered as spam by search engines like Google. So, instead of using an excessive amount of LSI keywords it’s better to understand the meaning of semantic search and use it properly.