LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are very important in SEO content writing and should be highly utilized by any website.
If you wish to understand what they are exactly, how they work, and how to make good use of them in your coming articles, then tag along.
Table of Contents
What Are LSI Keywords?
LSI keywords are basically keywords that are semantically connected to your major or primary keyword, used in a search query.
For example, if you were talking about music generally and the word “music” as your main or primary keyword, the LSI keywords
that would be ideal for this keyword include headphones, instruments, music downloads, music playlist, and so on.
These words are semantically related to each other based on the main keyword which is ” music” and so search engines expect to find them in an article on that topic so as to be able to categorize your article in the music niche and rank it well.
What these words do is enhance the primary keywords and assist them in bringing much more meaning to the content written for both your website visitors and search engines.
Now, unfortunately, most people confuse LSI keywords with synonyms. But what differentiates the two is that LSI keywords are put together because they share the same context but never the literal meaning.
What I mean is, for example, looking at the keyword I used earlier on, “music”, its different LSI keywords are related yes because they have been used in the context of music but their literal meanings are totally different from each other.
Looking at a brief history of LSI, it was initially created as a mathematical technique in the late 1980s to make data retrieval so much easier and accurate.
However, it is in 2004 that LSI was implemented in the Google algorithms with the aim of helping this search engine provide more reasonable results to users. From there through updates, Google was now able to not only look at a single word in an article and how often it’s used but also the related terms on that specific word.
How LSI Keywords Work
When a website uses more but relevant LSI keywords it often gets to cover many angles of the topic of discussion which not only helps the website visitors or readers get more information on the topic but also gets to show search engines that the content is of high quality.
As a result, what happens is that the page attracts the attention of the readers because they get what they are looking for and hence stay longer on that website.
This also shows search engines like Google that the article is a good fit for the readers, so they will consider ranking in their top positions in their results pages that increase the traffic for that website.
The traffic gets to increase even more because the same article will be ranked for different keywords including the LSI keywords.
What causes this traffic is the fact that people are searching for a specific topic in various ways and since the website has used the LSI keywords differently along with other relevant keywords by writing naturally about the topic, Google will match those search terms with the topic addressed on the website and hence it will show up in the search engine results pages of those keywords.
This benefits the website by ensuring its traffic growth as well as benefits the audience because they get their needs met.
Benefits of Using LSI Keywords
1. Increases the credibility of your content
As a result of using LSI keywords, the quality of your content becomes high since you address the hot areas of a certain topic and if you talk about them comprehensively, the readers will not only read it but also share it based on how much they liked it.
Because of this, the credibility of your work increases slowly by slowly all because you are unique from the rest.
2. Helps in boosting search engine rankings
First, the main role of a search engine is to provide completely valuable and suitable content to readers.
So, since using LSI keywords improves the quality of your work, you get more people reading your work, and hence search engines will rank you higher.
3. Helps visitors stay longer on your website
The main cause of this is of course great content.
Through the different use of LSI keywords, a content writer can maintain a simple and casual tone throughout the article that aims at providing information on various topics in a helpful way that the readers love and hence be able to capture and maintain their attention for a much longer time.
4. Aids you in coming up with more ideas in your writing
LSI keywords make it very simple for content writers to come up with various topical issues to discuss in their articles.
Through this, one can know how to approach a certain topic based on the audience and thus create unique as well as informative content.
5. Reduces the rate of bounce rates by readers
The bounce rate in this case refers to the rate at which people are leaving a page or post after clicking on it from the search engines.
It mostly happens when people go to a website post and maybe fail to get what they were looking for or get bored by the content because it’s not interesting enough, among other issues.
Since content creators that use LSI keywords always target the right audience, if they create helpful content around the topics they get from them, the bounce rates decrease because readers are getting not only valuable information but also one that is precisely targeted for them.
6. Improves the authority of a website
This is mainly because of better rankings which lead to an increase in traffic that makes people aware of your website and your good content that then makes it popular and authoritative.
How To Find LSI Keywords
To come up with good LSI keywords for the article you are writing, on any topic out there, here are 2 techniques that you can work with:
• Using Keyword Tools
Some of the best keyword tools that can help you with this include, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush as well as Jaaxy.
When you search for your main keyword in any of these tools, you will see, in the results, other keywords that are related to the main keyword that could make a good fit for your article and which also provide new content aspects and angles for the article.
Personally, I use the Jaaxy keyword tool to help with this and when you do a search of the main keyword with it, you are going to see many related keywords in the search results.
There is also a section you are going to see on the right side of the results that is named “related”. This section is rich in LSI keywords.
• Search Engines such as Google
If you look at the bottom of the search result page of search engines after you have searched for something, you will see a section called, “related searches”, and there you can get LSI keywords.
However, you must probe them further using a keyword tool just to make sure you are not picking a highly competitive keyword.
• Using LSI Graph Tool
This tool helps you find LSI keywords for your topic and niche so that you minimize competition and hence rank better.
It has a formula that helps you know the value of each keyword and hence allows you to know exactly which keyword you should work with.
You also get to learn about your competitor’s activity and how you can outrank them.
How to Use LSI Keywords Properly
Here are some tips that will help you make the most of LSI keywords and get maximum benefits from them.
• Choose LSI keywords that are relevant. Before identifying how you are going to use them in your work, you must first find out if they make sense in what you will discuss. Choosing irrelevant ones reduces the quality of your work and hence chokes your ranking capability. A good tip to this is getting to understand people’s search intent and then using that to come up with the best keywords and to vet other LSI keywords you get from search engines and keyword tools.
• Let them fit naturally in your article. Doing what we call keyword stuffing may hurt your article and so you want to be careful about the way you fit in your keywords. It’s not a must that you use all of them in your article, just place them where it’s extremely necessary using their other related words so that your work has more meaning and flows well.
• Know the best places to add them in your article. While distributing LSI keywords in your article is a good idea, there are specific places you can add them that can add SEO value to it and can also make a good replacement for your main keyword to avoid keyword stuffing.
Here are some section in your article that you should consider adding them;
√ In your title tag the section of your website that appears on search results pages.
√ In your meta description, that is the section where you give a brief summary of what your content is about.
√ In your introduction
√ In some of your headings
√ In your body
√ In some of your image alt tags, which is the short description given to an image.
√ In your anchor text, that is the section your audience can click to be redirected to somewhere else
Please note that you don’t have to include the keywords in all these sections. Just choose a couple of places going by the natural rhythm of your article and determine the best places to add them.
And that is pretty much the gist of LSI keywords.
I hope this article has helped you understand these keywords and know how to use them in your future articles.
I wish you the best as you do that and if you ever need any help in this area, always feel free to drop your questions in the comments and I will get back to you soon as I see them. 🙂
