The future of search engine optimization is LSI, which stands for latent semantic indexing. The idea is already being used by Google and will likely have a more powerful effect on search engine rankings as the technology becomes more complete. Sites designed with the technology in mind are already dominating the search results and include Wikipedia, The Wall Street Journal Online, and ESPN.com.

LSI takes indexing to the next level by creating a database of terms that appear close to each other on web pages. Let’s use the keyword ’search engine optmization’ for example. There are quite a few words that you would commonly find while reading about SEO including internet, website, search engine, marketing, ranking, positioning, placement, services, and search.

LSI technology says that a page that contains all of those terms will likely have better information than a page that doesn’t. This means that you will be able to get a page more highly ranked for the keyword ’search engine optimization’ by adding the related terms to that page. No matter what keyword you’re trying to get ranked for, there will be ‘magic words’ that should be added to the page you’re trying to get ranked.

Finding The Magic Words

In order to find the related, ‘magic’ words that should be included on your page, you can use a free service called Quintura. You can type in any keyword, and the service will show you the words that appear next to your keyword on other web pages.

In this example to the left, you can see a typical keyword bubble created with Quintura - it’s the bubble I created when I typed in ’search engine optimization’. The words that are bigger and bolder are more often found on pages that rank well for ’search engine optimization’.

Adding each of these words to a page about ’search engine optimization’ will help it to rank better for that keyword. This concept can help anyone to get better search engine rankings. The interesting thing to me is that it will also help us to write better documents.

Bonus SEO Tip

If you want to take this idea up to an even higher level, you can create a separate page that describes each of the ‘magic words’. That way you can link out to a page about each of the words, adding even more relevancy to your original document.