Using Semantic Language to rank, how much stock do you put into this? (LSI)
-
In theory, analyzing the top results for a given phrase and comparing the common words and phrases would indicate what google considers relative language to the query. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) was and still is a buzz phrase for some SEOs. But how much stock do you give to the idea that if you can determine the common language for top rankers and then duplicate that language and density of common words that your website will then rank for that query you desire?
Has anyone here tested the theory of using semantic language from the results themselves to better rank?
-
Thanks for the reply EGOL.
I agree, and I approach my content in a similar fashion to you. Your #2 means you are an "Author" which equates to "Authority".
However, I am still intrigued by the theory of finding common phrases among top rankers for a specific query, and using that in the content creation. There is a logic that says google tells you by the results what they want there.
For the most part, I think most people that push LSI only do so because it sounds kind of fancy.
-
how much stock do you give to the idea that if you can determine the common language for top rankers and then duplicate that language and density of common words that your website will then rank for that query you desire?
None. At least the way that it is worded.
I think that the more effective way to beat your competitors is to do something vastly superior instead of mimicking their methods.
When I write an article I want that article to cover....
-
The very basics of the topic
-
What I believe are the most important aspects of the topic that every person should know
-
A very broad survey of what everybody everywhere is searching for.
I think that #3 is the most important for ranking (and a superior goal than what than the LSI you described). To do this you should do keyword research and create content that covers as many of the major queries as possible - preferably as
subtopics
in your content. That gives you a page that answers what everybody everywhere is asking for.
Creating on-page anchor text for the
subtopics that people can click to go down the page to the desired topic is great for quickly engaging the visitor and powerful on-page optimization that I believe is second only to the value of a title tag.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why my website's Alexa rank is dropping
My website Alexa rank has dramatically dropped in the past 3 months: Website: www.sastasundar.com End of July, 2012: 5217 Global, 265 Local(India) But Now: ** 29260** Global, 2274 Local(India) Definitely something big has affected my global ranking and I'm not able to figure it out. Please help.
Competitive Research | | foreseegame0 -
Why would a newly created site, have ranked ahead of our site for keyword that we are optimized for?
This newly created site has a DA of 1 and PA of 1, no backlinks, no optimized urls, the keyword they ranked better than us on was listed a total of 6 times on the homepage. Our PA is 29 and DA is 18 for the page that ranks for this keyword. They really copied a few elements of our site but made sure to change a few things, but also list at the bottom of their site 5 keywords that are crucial to our niche industry but they're all linking to the same page. Any ideas? It's an SEO guy running the site, we've watched them toy with adwords trying to be number 1, but not liking the price, so they are here and there with it. Mainly I don't see why they'd rank better for this keyword, we our site have prolly 500% more content that's both of quality and relevance to our customers, in the form of Pdfs, infographics, help sections, and video. Very baffled here, any advice would rock!
Competitive Research | | Deacyde1 -
Ranking for Competitive Keywords vs. Less Competitive Keyword Variations
I'm curious about situations where a website ranks very well for query variations, but doesn't rank for the query itself (or the reverse of that). For Redfin (where I work), here is the situation with regard to keyword rankings on Google (searched today from USA, incognito)... real estate search - #4 real estate online - #4 real estate site - #5 find real estate - #9 get real estate - #16 real estate - #163 It stands to reason that a site ranking well for a competitive query should also rank well for less competitive query variations - especially query variations that are non-limiting and do not demand a custom landing page (for example, I would consider 'board games' to dramatically limit the query 'games' and be best targeted with a targeted page...not so with 'real estate site' and 'real estate'). So, my question is, what are some theories regarding situations like this? Why do some sites rank so well for competitive queries but not for non-limiting query variations? Why aren't the sites that are crushing us for 'real estate' also crushing us for 'real estate' variations (to be clear...the top sites are crushing us for both)? Is it anchor text? Is it social signals? Is it offline signals, co-occurrence, or citations? What about internal linking and site structure? I realize it's likely a mix of all this, but I'm hoping we can drum up some new ideas here. FYI, on Bing we also rank very well for 'real estate' variations, but leap up to 31st for 'real estate'. Thoughts?
Competitive Research | | RyanOD0 -
How did this little site rank #2?
Keyword: "adoption agency" Site: http://www.opendooradoption.org These guys are ranked #2 for this very competitive term in all US regions. They're beating Bethany (and my company) who are orders of magnitude larger in both company size and link profile. Their domain authority is 40, and they have less than 200 links pointing to them with "adoption agency" in the anchor according to OSE. Their on-site is pretty much nonexistent. Does anyone have any theories as to how they accomplished this?
Competitive Research | | AdoptionHelp0 -
Trying to rank against keyword in domain
I am trying to rank for let's say the keyword "their site" , my competitor has theirsite.com, with next to no seo but are ranking #1 , my site lets say is mysite.com/their-site my site is about the same age and has a PR of 4,their site has a PR of 0 and 2 backlinks, how difficult will it be to get to number 1, am at spot # 5 in google now. Thanks David
Competitive Research | | David750 -
I'v been trying to rank for this word for a long time
Hi, I have this one page designed to rank for a spesific word i google (sweden). The page has a flawless moz grade A on-page. While my competator ranks for their subdomain, also grade A. I rank 6 he ranks 2 in google. Would I be doing a misstake if i 301 directed it to mu subdomain. In visitor perspective it would be a better landig page aswell. I dont want to lose my rank though. Best practice, anyone?
Competitive Research | | SuperlativB1 -
Questiton about new ranking factors
Hi, I am new to seomoz and i was very much impressed with the stuff here in seomoz. The tools here in seomoz are very helpful to me . And i was doing good with the help of seomoz. But due to recent google's algo panda 2.0 update. I was bit confused about new ranking factors that google has released. I can see here in seomoz also that page level link metrics has good importance than backlinks now. Earlier google algo gives main importance to backlinks now i can see in the list it went to bottom. Can you help in explaining these things, on which things i need to concentrate on and does backlinks really count now?? Many people stopped concentrating on backlinks now and are going for facebook likes and tweets. Here is the good example that i can see: www.hotfilesearch.com which is a flle search engine. He was one of the competitor for me . He ranked very good in a short span of time, all he did was he bought some really good paid links and within 6 moths he was on top. Now i can see he was dropping out every link he has. But though he was ranking pretty good on the web. I really in need of your suggestions to optimize my site. Awaiitng for your reply.. Regards Dheeraj
Competitive Research | | achillies0000 -
How much weight does Google give to Exact Match Domains?
I'm building a site on a virtual host and now it's ready to go online, but i still have to choose a domain name. One of the main keywords i want to rank for is a 3-word keyword phrase with 9000+ exact match searches per month. Here's an example to better understand my question: 'Guitar training lessons' My main competitor's domain is only 5 months old but it does have the full keyword phrase in it with '4u' added at the end: www.guitartraininglessons4u.com I wanted to go with www.guitartrainingcenter.com (notice that 'lessons' is left out of the domain name) but i'm wondering if my main competitor would have a big advantage by having the full keyword phrase in his domain. How much weight does google give to sites that have the exact search query in their domain name? Does a domain still qualify as 'exact match' if a word (info) is added to it? How much harder would it be to outrank this domain as apposed to a site that doesn't have the keywords in its domain name? Thanks in advance Freek
Competitive Research | | ZeroGrav1