Using Latent Semantic Indexing on Your Website

NOTE: Since this article was first published here, differences of opinion have been made known to me over whether search engines, like Google, actually use latent semantic indexing (LSI) in their ranking analysis. From first-hand experience I've learned that it is true that Google and other search engines may look for related words that should appear in the text in order for the content to be considered comparatively more relevant than text which does not contain those words and phrases (in some circles referred to as "themes"). However, I'm not so certain this should be considered LSI in its truest mathematical sense. Please see the update at the end of this post.

My guest, Cliff Posey, contends that Latent semantic indexing (LSI) - also known as latent semantic analysis (LSA) - is used by Google and some other search engines in determining rankings for your home business website's keywords and he provides suggestions for how you can incorporate LSI techniques in your website as part of your website marketing strategy for better search rankings.

Related topics:

• Latent Semantic Indexing Defined
• Search Engine Marketing
• Do It Yourself Search Optimization
• Website Promotion

UPDATE: Since this article was first published, I received the following comment from reader Michael Duz:

Contrary to popular belief latent semantic indexing (LSI) is not used by Google or any other search engine for that matter. This is for very good reasons, not least because the technique is extremely inefficient when applied to inhomogeneous datasets such as a large collection of webpages.

Information Retrieval research scientists have just about managed to perform LSI on approximately 0.01% of the web but the academic jury is still out on the usefulness of the results.

If you are interested in this topic you may like to read What is Latent Semantic Indexing? and The LSI Myth.