Algorithmic Allegory

Algorithms used by the various search engines are pretty clever things and they keep moving the goal posts. The new parameters incorporate Latent Semantic Indexing, commonly referred to as LSI. The percentage of keyword density was the ultimate SEO tool at one time. Not so much now, however. When keyword density was calculated manually, website content was written as a background to support some well-chosen, strategically placed keywords. Single keywords now need to be dense enough to achieve sufficient rankings and, to optimize this concept, employing SEO software makes much more sense.

Latent Semantic Indexing focuses on structure and utilizes thematic structure centered around synonyms which appear in the content of websites. The person at the forefront of the LSI /SEO strategy is Charles Heflin who wrote ‘The Master Plan’, providing a definitive guide to the benefits of LSI marketing. The company, Applied Semantics, is not new, the concept has been around for a long time and Google took over the company, Applied Semantics, in 2003. This whole idea is based around the CIRCA technology which has been attributed with imitating human thought patterns. Adsense incorporates this CIRCA technology resulting in more objective advertising campaigns.

Keyword targeting was based on how often certain words were used in a text. This is no longer relevant and does not achieve the previous ranking it once enjoyed. Search engines now require synonyms to be alluded to, similar to the advertised subject. One of the key factors here is learning how to make full use of the search engines, such as Google. Typing ‘phrase’ into Google after the word you are seeking brings up a number of words in bold, considered by Google to be semantically linked words to the one you are searching for.

A thesaurus, however, would not be appropriate as these are determined by search engines rather than a thesaurus. The key is proficiency in expression, based on the ‘vector space model of document classification’ – or, in simpler terminology, the pattern of the text based on the position of the words. Latent Semantic Indexing relies on using statistics to identify which words are used in similar contexts, revealing their relevancy to the whole text. This important new concept, while important to search engines, takes time to write into articles and websites. This is why it is more and more important to use software for search engine optimization. One particularly useful piece of software is the Dupe-Free Pro which has an integral LSI button and analyses the density percentage of every LSI term.