LSI Keywords: Why They Are Important
If you’ve been writing content for your website or working in SEO for any amount of time, then you’ve probably come across the term LSI keywords. Everyone seems to be talking about them telling you to use more on your website and in your content, but why does it matter?
If you didn’t know already, Google LOVES LSI keywords and rewards websites that use them. Just having a sprinkling of LSI keywords on your website can help it jump up in the search results overnight.
But what exactly are LSI keywords and how do you use them on your website? We thought you’d never ask! Here’s everything you need to know.
What Are LSI Keywords?
LSI keywords are basically a fancy name for saying a keyword is related. Over the years Google has been collecting petabytes of data to help it improve its search results for users. By analyzing this data, Google has managed to determine how keywords are related to each other and how they can display relevant content to users.
If you’re wondering what LSI stands for, then it’s Latent Semantic Indexing. This strange term is actually the mathematical formula Google use their search engine to help determine the relationship between keywords.
LSI keywords can take many different forms. Sometimes they are synonyms of each other; sometimes they are abbreviations. Most of the time they just happen to be on enough web pages of a similar keyword to make them related.
Google is smart enough to realize that the keyword “search engine optimization” is actually the same as “SEO”. They mean exactly the same thing and therefore have a very close relationship. That is probably a very obvious example, but most of the time it’s not that obvious.
Sometimes there will be a keyword or phrase that appears on almost every web page relating to a particular keyword, and you won’t even notice it.
The Many Benefits of LSI Keywords
Now that you know what an LSI keyword is, why should you include them on your website? Won’t it ruin your content and make it unreadable? Not at all – it’s even the opposite.
LSI keywords are great at helping search engines understand your website. The days of keyword stuffing are gone. If you put the same keyword or phrase too many times on your website, then you could be punished. Instead, LSI keywords are the way to go.
Like we mentioned before since Google sees search engine optimization as SEO, then you should use the keywords interchangeably. Not only does this make your content nicer to read, instead of using the same keyword over and over again, it also helps Google understand your website better.
But that’s not all.
LSI keywords are also an excellent way to find relevant things to write about. Maybe you’re writing some content for your website on a particular keyword but are out of ideas. No problem! Simply research some LSI keywords, and it will give you an idea of related topics, phrases, and keywords you can include. Not only does this help reduce your researching time, but it also makes your content more power, more interesting and more appealing to Google.
As you can see, LSI keywords can do wonders for your website.
How to Find LSI Keywords
If you want to tell Google that your content and website is relevant to users, then you’ll need to find suitable LSI keywords first. There are several ways to find LSI keywords so depending on how many you want will depend on which technique you use.
LSI Graph
The first and easiest way to find LSI keywords is by heading over to LSI Graph and entering in your keyword. The tool will then work its magic and find the best-related keyword to your search. If you’re wondering where it gets these from then, it’s actually straight from Google. If you ever scroll to the bottom of search results, you’ll notice a list of related keywords and phrases like below.
LSI Graph basically does all the hard work for you and crawls every page of the results to collect all the related phrases. It’s definitely a useful tool and a massive time saver.
Keyword Planner
The second quick and easy way to find LSI keywords is again by using Google itself. By heading over to the AdWords Keyword Planner Tool, you can quickly find relevant keywords that Google think are related. Enter your keyword and press the “get ideas” button. Remember to make sure they’re sorted by relevance, and you’ll have a list of the most related keywords.
Google Search Results
Another useful technique to help find LSI keywords is using Google search results to see how Google interprets keywords. Every time you do a Google search, Google will automatically bold the keyword or related keyword in the results. Like we showed in the example earlier, search engine optimization is also shown as SEO.
If you enter a keyword into Google and browse through the top results, you’ll get an idea of the keywords Google is returning. Sometimes you won’t get that many useful ideas, but it will give you a clue on what people are writing to rank on the first page.
Google Autocomplete
The last way to get relevant LSI keywords is by using Google’s autocomplete feature. This feature gives you ideas on what keywords people are searching for that are very closely related to your keyword.
To find a list of relevant keywords, simply head on over to Google and enter your specific keyword. There will then be a drop down menu which lists all the autocomplete results. Using these phrases and keywords in your content is a great way to improve its relevancy and get a boost from Google.
