If you’ve done some research on SEO, I’m sure that you would have come across the terms Semantic Web or LSI Keyword Research.

Often, many understand it as being related keywords. However, that’s not all there is to the topic. To fully understand what are LSI keywords and how it really works, read on.

However, if you are just looking for a quick way to actively use LSI Keywords to to improve your SEO, you can check out the newest version of our WordPress SEO plugin, SEOPressor Connect.

Our WordPress plugin can help you identify the LSI keywords of your target keywords, and help you analyze your writing to find if you have included the ideal count to rank for multiple relevant searches. 

And for those who are looking to do it manually, don’t worry, you won’t be left behind. I’m still going to show you how you can use LSI Keywords and add them to your content strategy without the help of our plugin.

Without further ado, let’s start with the big story – the semantic web.

What is the Semantic Web?

To put it in the simplest term – the semantic web is the aim to prepare web content in a way that they’re not only understandable by human readers, but also to machine readers.

Machine readers include things like search engines, web crawlers, or even web browsers, such as Google’s very own Chrome browser.

Making your content understandable to machine readers via the usage of LSI Keyword will grant significant benefits. Few examples:

• Getting ranked better in relevant searches and along with it, more meaningful traffic.
• Getting ranked less in irrelevant searches, avoiding less clutter traffic that causes decreased page-on-time and increased bounce rate.
• Getting your website included and featured in Google Knowledge Graph
• Getting your website contents featured in answer boxes for question-type searches – a huge sign of authority.

In most marketer’s context, we are interested most in making our content understandable to search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. In order to do that, it’s best to understand how search engines decipher the meaning or context of a website.

There are mainly 2 ways search engines approach this:

1. Improving their algorithm to understand web contents by incorporating linguistic processing such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
2. Incorporate the use of markups to label web content accordingly. These markups need to be in a format that is recognizable by machine readers.

By knowing how search engines attempt at understanding our contents, we can participate in making the process easier, faster, and more accurate for them. This will end up in a win-win situation where search engines are able to display the best results and marketers gets a better, more accurate ranking.

In this article, I will only focus on the first method while I will cover web markups in a future article pretty soon.

How do Search Engines understand Context?

Search engines started off being relatively simple. They just take the words typed in a search query and match it with the ones found in web pages existing across different websites on the internet.

This often ends up with inaccurate results, ones that don’t fit the user’s search intent.

That’s because you see, keywords on its own can refer to a multitude of different subjects.

Take “apple” for example. Apple can simply mean the sweet red fruit. Or it can even mean the company that produces those expensive tech gadgets.

So how do search engines differentiate which is which?

One of the ways is through the usage of Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI for short.

What Is Latent Semantic Indexing?

Simply put, LSI is a system to decipher the context of how a particular keyword is used. This is done by examining the rest of the content where the keyword is found for consistently reoccurring complementary keywords.

By analyzing a huge number of documents, a system can map which complementary keywords is often used in a particular context revolving around a particular keyword.

This information can be used in reverse to discover the context a keyword is used by looking at the other keywords that appear in the rest of the text.

If that sounds mouthful to you, don’t worry. With some examples, it will be clearer.

Take again the apple we talked about earlier.

If in a set of content we can find the words “healthy”, “sweet” or “fruit salad” it’s safe to say that the word “apple” in this context means the fruit.

While upon finding words like “lightning port”, “iPhone” or “AirPods” used, it’s clear that “apple” in that context means the tech company.

These accompanying words provide context to the main keywords and they are also known as LSI keywords.

How To Use LSI Keywords to Boost Your SEO?

By incorporating the right LSI keywords in your content, you can strengthen the context of your article to be picked up easier by search engines. This will lead to better and more accurate rankings.

But how do you use LSI keywords in your content? Basically, there are 2 steps on using LSI keywords:

1. Finding LSI Keywords

First of all, you need a way to gather related keywords for your content. There are various tools and methods available for finding LSI Keywords. Some of the examples:

Keyword Intelligence by BiQ

Simply enter your targeted keyword in the Keyword Intelligence, and it will return with a list of valuable keywords for you. Each keyword also comes with its important metrics including trend, volume, CPC, competitions, intents, and value. 

If you are not sure which keyword to use, you can sort the keyword by its value. A higher-valued keyword means it can potentially give you more traffic at lower competitions. 

Keyword intelligence helps you foresee the intent of each keyword. Knowing your user’s intent is essential to creating content that they want to read and potentially turn them into your loyal readers.

Go ahead and try out Keyword Intelligence for free immediately!

LSIGraph

The next go-to LSI tool, LSIGraph is also another good keyword tool you can use to get LSI keyword suggestions. You can simply type in your target keyword and it will generate a huge list of LSI keyword suggestions.

Here is how it looks like in the paid version:

Or you can also try LSIGraph for free here. 

Google Autocomplete

Google search engine itself is a good way to get some ideas on LSI keywords. When you start typing a focus keyword in the Google search box, Google will try to predict your search as you type based on popular searches. These predictions or suggestions often include usable LSI keywords.

Google Related Searches

When you do a Google search, usually Google will provide a list of related searches at the bottom of the SERP. You can also find some LSI keywords here.

Finding LSI keyword alone is a huge title on its own but these 4 would make a good start. Once you managed to get enough LSI keywords suggestions, you can proceed to select those closely related to your context.

2. Implementing LSI Keywords

Once you selected the most relevant LSI keywords, it’s time to use them in your content. While you can generally use them anywhere, you can make the best out of them by including LSI keywords in this manner:

• Title Tag – Your main keyword takes priority in the title tag. But if you can, use only highly relevant LSI keywords and LSI keywords synonymous with your main keyword.
• Description Tag – Here, choose LSI keywords that strengthen/complement your core message instead of just using synonyms.
• Header Tags – In the header tags, use LSI keywords that will help to describe your paragraphs. Make sure the LSI keywords used fit in naturally.
• URL – Similar to the title tag, the limited character count means that priority should be given to your main keyword. If the opportunity arises, use highly relevant or synonymous LSI keywords.
• Anchor Texts – Anchor text is a perfect place for you to use your LSI keywords. Instead of anchoring your main keyword, anchoring an LSI keyword tends to make an anchor text much more believable.
• First and the last paragraph – Using highly related LSI keywords at the beginning/ending of your article is also a good idea. Besides strengthening your core message, it is also a natural and interesting way to start/end your article.

How To Automate The Whole Process

Using LSI keywords in your content to improve SEO isn’t that hard, but it can still consume your focus, time, and effort. Doing it right might require a lot of in-depth research and they add up real quick especially if you’re doing a lot of content.

Not a good thing especially if you got tons of other stuff to do.

So how do you keep it off your mind while still gaining benefits out of LSI keywords? Well, you can do it with our new SEOPressor Connect.

Remember when I previously shared how to find LSI keywords? You go to a few places to get suggestions to be included in your content. You might jot it down somewhere before including them in your content.

This works, but it isolates the process of implementing LSI keywords from the optimization of your content.

The new SEOPressor Connect handles this by incorporating a built-in LSI engine. And what’s even more amazing is that it’s not just any LSI engine – we are powered by LSIGraph, arguably one of the best LSI keyword generators out there.

So you no longer need to do an additional task of doing separate LSI keyword research. Not when you can get LSI keyword suggestions in real-time as you create your content.

SEOPressor Connect lists down LSI keyword suggestions and crosses those already used in the content. This way you have a mini checklist to keep track of LSI keyword usage in your content,

The implemented LSI keywords, in turn, will be taken into account when calculating your content’s SEO score.

LSI keywords contribute to improving your SQ Density (Semantic Quality Density), which basically means how well your content can be read by machine readers such as Google.

SEOPressor Connect also allows you to have up to 3 target keywords for your article and you can get unique LSI keyword suggestions for each of them. Imagine having to find LSI keywords for 3 separate keywords manually while keeping all of them bound to the same context. That’s messed up!

When it comes to LSI keywords alone, SEOPressor Connect does the following for you:

1. Suggests LSI keywords for up to 3 main keywords.
2. Incorporates LSI keyword usage in SEO score calculation.
3. Keeps track of used and unused LSI keywords in your content.

This massively improved LSI feature, along with a slew of many other critical SEO features, made SEOPressor Connect pretty much the complete SEO plugin for WordPress. You no longer need to depend on multiple plugins or use external tools which come with a lot of hassle and complications.

If you’re already a user of SEOPressor connect, you can learn more about how to use LSI keywords to improve your SEO score in this tutorial.

Let me know if you find this article helpful. I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions and you can submit them in the comment section below. Cheers!

Related Posts: 

• Short Tail vs Long Tail Keywords? — A Side-by-Side Comparison
• How To Decide Which Keywords To Use? — Comprehensive Keyword Research Guide
• 9 Types of Keywords in SEO You Need to Know to Convert

The Four Step
Keyword Research Tracker

• Access various keyword research tools from one convenient page
• Improves search intent discovery and keyword expansion process
• Real keyword research example to guide you along the process

Updated: 3 December 2024