LSI Keywords Generator

What Are LSI Keywords?

LSI keywords (latent semantic indexing) are keywords that are similar in nature and context to the main keyword you’re targeting within your content. Without getting too technical, LSI keywords are words or keyword phrases that Google associates with your main keyword.

It’s important to understand that LSI keywords are NOT synonyms of your keyword. Instead, they are words that help search engines determine the context of the content you’re producing.

So for example, if your keyword was dog training, some LSI words might be treat, leash etc… Why? Well, these are words that Google would expect to see in an article about dog training. It helps show that the article is relevant and contains quality information. Keep in mind Google is a robot. It uses relationships between words to help understand the overall meaning of an article.

So how does that help us?

If we knew which words and keyword phrases Google expects to see in an article on a certain topic and we could incorporate those words into our article, then it would not only help Google see that our article is relevant but also of higher quality. This all makes it easier and more likely to rank.

How Are LSI Keywords Relevant to SEO?

Google uses LSI keywords as a way to identify the context of your content.

Since different keywords can obviously have different meanings, Google uses latent semantic indexing to identify the meaning of the keyword that you're using and return relevant content for the users search query.

For example, let's say you have a recipe blog and are writing a post about "dressing".

The term "dressing" can have several different connotations, including:

• Dressing for a salad or other dish
• Dressing for a turkey (also known as "stuffing")
• Dressing as in the act of getting dressed
• Dressing as in a gauze or ointment that's applied to a wound

In each of these instances, search engines utilize LSI keywords to understand exactly what you mean by "dressing". For instance:

• If words like 'salad', 'ranch', 'sugar-free', 'recipe', etc. are included in the content, search engines will assume your post is about dressing for salad and other dishes
• If words like 'thanksgiving', 'stuffing', 'turkey', 'family gathering', etc. are included in the content, it will be assumed that your content is about dressing for a turkey
• If words like 'clothes', 'socks', 'shoes', 'shirts', 'pants', etc. are included in the content, search engines will realize that it's about the act of getting dressed
• If words like 'wound', 'blood', 'ointment', 'gauze', 'injury', etc. are included in the content, search engines will assume the post is about dressing for a wound

In our example, where you're attempting to show search engines that your content is related to dressing for a salad, you'd want to include LSI keywords related to that topic such as 'salad', 'ranch', 'healthy', 'recipe', 'homemade', 'low calorie', etc.

Do LSI Keywords Factor Into Your SEO Ranking?

As with most things in the world of SEO, we don’t know for sure how Google and other search engines factor LSI keywords into their algorithms.

Some experienced SEO specialists, such as Clark Boyd of Candid Digital, believe that latent semantic indexing won’t help your SEO.

Others, such as Ashton Kimberley and us here at Keysearch, believe that they’re extremely important to SEO ranking because they signal to search engines that your content will satisfy what the user is searching for.

Both of these SEO experts make valid points for their opinions.

The reality is that, even if LSI keywords do not have a direct impact on SEO, the fact that they aid Google in determining relevance of content (and therefore help search engines achieve their ultimate goal of giving searchers what they want) means that they, at the very least, play an indirect role in SEO ranking.

How to Incorporate LSI Keywords Into Your Content

Ok so now that we know about LSI keywords, here is where we can gain our edge. We can just include these LSI words, give Google what it wants and make our lives that much easier when it comes to ranking!

You’d be surprised at how well this works. In our dog training example above, would I have known to include references to Koehler training? Would I have referenced operant conditioning? Possibly if I was a dog training expert but even still I may have left those things out.

Now I know Google wants to see these things, so I’ll make sure its there. Not only that, by adding these words into my article you can already see the article quality would be even better.

The most obvious way to include LSI keywords into your content is to actually put them in the sub-headings and body of the content.

It’s especially valuable when these keywords are used as anchor text and in the first/last paragraph of your content.

But showing relevancy doesn’t stop there.

Other options for incorporating latent semantic indexing keywords involve including them in:

• Title Tags
• Meta Tags
• Alt Tags
• Header Tags
• Captions Under Images
• Image File Names

This certainly doesn’t mean that you should start stuffing LSI keywords everywhere that you can (as this will most likely hurt your cause).

But incorporating them naturally throughout your content, and in the other areas above, is a sure-fire way to help Google’s algorithms understand exactly what your content is about.