Google SERPS for similar Keywords?

[Tinderbox]

I have website which is being listed for a keyword which is not in the site. It seems that google is using a Thesaurus to find words with similar meaning.

Is this right? How could this be used for SEO purposes?

[MarieHaynes]

I'm currently reading a book called "In the Plex" by Steven Levy which talks about how Google got started.  They talk about how Google learned to predict relevance.  I'll paraphrase the example because I don't have the book in front of me.

Let's say someone typed in the search phrase - i want to buy a cat, and they get their page of search results.  But let's say that they immediately go back and do another search.  (This tells Google that their results didn't provide an answer).  So this time they type in, i want to buy a kitten.  Now, Google knows that cat and kitten are relevant to each other.  Similarly, if their next search was i want to buy a devon rex then Google knows that cat, kitten, and devon rex are all similar terms.  Of course, the algorithm wouldn't change for just one user's search but rather if hundreds of people were interchanging cat for kitten then eventually the algo learns that they are relevant to each other.

So, how can you use this for seo purposes?  Check out this search for i want to buy a cat -cat The "-cat" tells Google not to include searches that use the word cat.  So, you get results that Google thinks are relevant to I want to buy a cat.  From this search I can see that I should also be targetting the words, kitten, persian, siamese, main coon, etc.

This is a quick off-the-top-of my head example, but you could certainly play with it.

[EGOL]

I have a site that uses the words "photo" and "photographs" but google sends traffic for pictures, pics, images, etc.   Maybe someone is linking to me with those as anchor text.... but I believe that google knows that my site should get that traffic.

[StalkerB]

This has always been the case to a degree.

If you put the tilde in before a keyword Google will show you other words it thinks mean the same thing by highlighting them in the SERPs.

For example, searching for '~poker' also highlights "POKE", "card games" and "hold 'em" as synonyms on the first page.

You can use Google Sets - http://labs.google.com/sets - to also find related keywords that you are targeting.

Again for example, putting in poker, casino, gambling and horse racing also gives: bingo, blackjack, roulette, bet, football, craps, baccarat, keno, video poker and more!

Finally searching for a keyword and scrolling to the bottom of the SERPs gives you a "Searches related to KEYWORD" section, which you can also use to see what you may rank for.

As for how to use this info, well...

Firstly you can start by adding a few of the related keywords into your copy (I like to do this at the start of writing copy, but no reason you can't edit it later). You don't want to get rid of all instances of your primary keyword, but once it's on the page 3 or 4 times already there's no harm in substituting synonyms where appropriate.

Secondly you can use these related keywords to build new content. This has advantages of allowing potentially a second listing, a higher listing for the synonym and by interlinking the pages improving your main keyword's importance with onpage SEO.

I'll have a think if there's anything else that could be significantly improved by having this info, but it should be enough to get you going