Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Latent Semantic Indexing Changes The Face Of Optimization

There's a new system that's shaking up how websites garner search engine ranking. The former quick ways of keyword stuffing, link farming and so on are no longer the best route to go. Latent Semantic Indexing is changing the way searches happen. As a result, this new system is also altering the necessary strategies for getting traffic and ranking.

Google is behind the creation of latent semantic indexing. This system, which basically means hidden meaning indexing, was designed to enable the search engine to better scan pages for their overall themes. It boils down to being a system that offers a more sophisticated way for the search engine to measure sites for their relevance in regard to individual searches. While latent semantic indexing doesn't require a complete redo of websites, it does mean that webmasters who focus on high quality content are more likely to get ahead.

The history of latent semantic indexing is a continuation of Google's mission to make its search engine produce relevant, high-quality results. The initial ranking system relied heavily on incoming links and keywords alone to scan pages for their relevancy in regard to searches. Unfortunately, this system had a propensity to penalize some very good and relevant sites. It would overlook sites that were too new or added content too quickly. Although there are plenty of new sites that aren't necessarily loaded with good content, some are.

The old way wasn't working, so Google sought out to fix it. Latent semantic indexing was the answer. While a lot of the old measures do matter (i.e. incoming links), they don't as much with latent semantic indexing.

This new focus puts an emphasis on quality and freshness of content to help sites gain ranking position. In essence, latent semantic indexing is meant to give a search the best possible site to meet their needs based on relevant keywords and comprehensive coverage and not just incoming links. This system basically presents a more fair way to give search engine users the pages they really want. It does what Google has always tried to do - provide higher quality, more relevant results.

The days of Google placing a bigger emphasis on incoming links or votes to rank sites for searches are coming to a close. Although incoming links will still be important, particularly if two sites tie on a search, these links don't carry the same weight. This simply makes it easier for webmasters who do their jobs well to gain opportunity for ranking.

What all of this means to web publishers is that those who have done and continue to do their jobs correctly will have a better chance of shining with latent semantic indexing. Those who keyword stuff, create nonsensical content and spend a lot of time using link farms likely will not.

The real key to getting ahead with latent semantic indexing is to produce useful pages that follow themes and stick to them. Webmasters that do this will likely rank better on searches. Sites that don't, might have some issues to contend with.


About Author:

Jeff Alderson specializes in maximizing traffic and sales. He is also the developer of numerous PPC and SEO software. Jeff suggests using a keywords analyzer like Ad Word Analyzer to find keywords for your site.Click here for other unique seo articles.