Google has made two important keyword shifts over the last 1-2 years and they are long-tail and LSI keywords. I’ve been writing about long-tail keywords and how to effectively use them in your content, but LSI can be just as engaging. LSI stands for “latent semantic indexing” and the accurate definition is:
“Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a system used by Google and other major search engines. The contents of a webpage are crawled by a search engine and the most common words and phrases are collated and identified as the keywords for the page.”
In other words, it’s a system used by Google to find a pattern in your content to combined related keywords. LSI keywords are finding “related” keywords to your target and this way, you’re increasing the chance of ranking for those terms, too. This concept sounds complicated but we have tools at our disposal that helps streamline the entire process going forward. If you’re new to blogging, then you don’t know how you can streamline your research so let’s look at two cool ways to get this done.
In part 1, we’ll discuss using Google Keyword Planner and Search. In part 2, we’ll be looking at tools available to you for a fraction of the price.
Part 1- Google Research
I personally love using Google for my keyword research because they make things so simple. They provide you FREE tools and they are accurate so it streamlines the entire research process. First, you have Google Keyword Planner and when you log in, you start with your target keyword. Sort results by Keyword Ideas. It’s important to note NOT to touch the display because Google automatically provides a list filtered by relevancy. However, you can do the following to find even more relevant results.
If your “target” keyword is too broad, then you might want to find a seed keyword and generate ideas using that phrase. For example, if I type in “weight loss”, Google will generate the following:
- Weight loss diet
- Weight loss face
- Weight loss belly
- Fast weight loss
- And many more
I suggest narrowing down the filter, finding a more “targeted” keyword and pulling ideas generated by Google Keyword Planner. Remember, when the tool generates results, leave them in the way they appear because Google is displaying MOST to LEAST relevant.
Next,
Google Search
Google has tweaked their search engine to provide the MOST accurate results. This means while you’re searching, you have two cool ways to find relevant keywords to add into your content. First, when you start typing a search phrase, you pull keywords out of the drop-down that opens up. How does this work?
Over the years, Google has tracked statistics and knows what other relevant terms closely match what you’re typing. They’ll display them in the drop-down, providing related keyword ideas so you find what you’re looking for. Secondly, you can generate results and then scroll to the bottom to find other related terms. Let’s look at this further…
Head over to Google and type in “weight loss diet” and click search. Google will generate results and when you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see a section labelled “Searches related to ‘your keyword’”. All of the keywords listed under that section are “closely” related keywords perfect for you to add to your content before publishing. Here are some of the results they’ve provided from the example search:
All of these results are perfect and relevant for those people looking to find a handful of awesome keywords to implement into their content. Next, you’ll notice they have the “seed” or “target” keyword in the phrase, which is “weight loss diet”.
Going forward, use these two strategies to quickly find some cool LSI (related) keywords to add to your content because you’ll be able to attract relevant search traffic to your blog.