SEO glossary · L

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

What is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)?

Latent semantic indexing is a mathematical method, developed in the late 1980s, for finding relationships between words and documents in a fixed collection of texts. It was designed for searching small document sets, long before modern web search.

What about “LSI keywords”?

In SEO, “LSI keywords” is a popular name for related words and synonyms added to a page. The idea that Google uses LSI to rank pages is a myth: Google has said it doesn’t, and the method doesn’t scale to a web of billions of pages.

The advice behind it is still sensible. Search engines use far more advanced language models to understand topics, so a page that naturally covers related terms, subtopics and questions shows that it deals with the subject properly.

What to do instead

  • Look at the pages that rank for your keyword and note the subtopics they cover.
  • Check “People also ask”, related searches and Google’s autocomplete for questions to answer.
  • Write naturally for the reader, using the words they would use.

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