Have you ever heard of Latent Semantic Indexing – or LSI, for short?  It’s a long name for a really cool search result you get in Google when searching for something.

Have you ever searched in Google and noticed that the words you typed in to search for are bolded in the search results, but not always in the exact order you entered them? That’s called latent semantic indexing – simply put, Google will show you sites that contain your search words, even if those words are not all together in one phrase on the site.

This is huge, because your site can actually rank for keywords/phrases that you didn’t intent to optimize your site for.  You need to have all the words of the phrase on your site, but Google picks out those words and bolds them to match the keyword phrase being searched. That’s LSI in action.

I have a latent semantic indexing example for you… recently I had someone contact me saying they found me via Google when they searched for “premium web cart outsourcing” and I was #1 in the search results for that phrase!

I do work with Premium Web Cart and I do offer outsourcing services (here and here). Like most marketers, I do keyword research and optimize my site for keyword phrases that show folks are actually searching for that phrase; but I did not specifically optimize my site for “premium web cart outsourcing”.  It was latent semantic indexing in action that got me that #1 spot in Google.

In this example of LSI in action,  I got a new client based on a LSI search result that I did not set out to optimize my site for! Sweet!

SEO (search engine optimization) is its own field of expertise. The SEO field is one that’s tricky and where you need to be very careful – because the almighty Google doesn’t like it when you over SEO your site and stuff it with keywords – that’s considered spam!

Do your keyword research, so you will know these three key things:

1. What your main keyword phrase is: Find your main keyword phrase  - and make sure that phrase is getting searched already.
2. What are your long-tail phrases. Find some long-tail (3 or more word phrases) phrases that are related to your main phrase or compliment that phrase.  These could end up being LSI phrases for you.
3. Write your content for people, not search engines; and mention the products, services, programs or systems that you use or recommend within the content you write. Again, these could end up being LSI phrases that you rank for, without even trying!

Google has been on a crack down recently, first with the Panda update and more recently with the Penguin update.

Panda Update: They de-indexed sites that were using what they consider black hat SEO and using blog link networks to build backlinks to their site.  Those blog networks, and all the sites within those blog networks got de-indexed over night.  So if they were #1 in Google, they dropped out of site and their organize search engine traffic stopped.

Penguin Update: Sites that were overly SEO’d, meaning they stuffed their site unnaturally with keyword phrases and were essentially written for search engines and not people.  If you would not talk to a person face-to-face and use the same natural language flow and usage of words or phrases, then Google considers that spam and de-indexed those sites.  You wouldn’t say your keyword phrase 5, 6 or 10 times in a few paragraphs when talking to someone; so don’t talk that way to Google either.

Keep it real – keep it natural = Latent Semantic Indexing

When writing content on your site, keep it real. On your About or Services pages and/or in the blog posts you write, mention the products you work with, brands you use…. talk to people. Give them valuable content, helpful content and in the case of LSI, “name dropping” (aka: mentioning people, products, services) is a good thing, as you could rank for phrases you never thought you would!

Do your due diligence in doing keyword research for your niche; but write your content and provide quality, helpful information written for people. Google knows how to read, they can tell if you’re writing for them, or for your target audience – just provide the quality and let Google sort out the rest.  Trying to ‘game the search engine system’ can – and will – get you banned, if you aren’t very careful.

Did your site get de-indexed via the Panda or Penguin updates?

Does your site rank for any LSI phrases?

To YOUR Success,

Traci

I’m sure you’ve probably at least heard of Genesis – no, I’m not talking about my blog.  I’m referring to the WordPress theme.  I use the Genesis Framework on nearly every one of my personal sites, and nearly every site I build for clients too!

What is a framework theme?

A framework is where you have the ‘guts’ (for the lack of a better term) that run the theme installed separately on your site, and is referred to from within a child theme.  The child theme is where you get the look and design elements of your site.

So Genesis acts as a framework of files that works behind the scenes, in conjunction with the activated child theme on your site, to give your site the full functions and features of both the Genesis framework, and the design and look from the child theme.

So you need to have both the Genesis framework and the child theme installed in your theme folder for WordPress; but you only activate the child theme.

Upgrading is a breeze with Genesis

If you’ve had a custom theme designed, and for whatever reason your theme stops working with the latest version of WordPress – you either have to pay the web designer more money to upgrade your theme to make it work; or if it’s already a premium non-framework theme, and an upgrade is released, you could lose your customizations when upgrading.  Or you use one of the default themes for WordPress (Twenty-Ten or Twenty-Eleven), and you upgrade – you could easily lose all of your customizations.  It’s a nightmare!

But with the Genesis framework, the framework is what gets upgraded and keeps the theme working properly with WordPress (and keeps up with WordPress’ updates and near functions and features) and your child theme remains untouched – your customizations intact.

Learn more about the Genesis Framework

There is a lot more to know about the Genesis framework.  Why not click here to download The Genesis Guide for Absolute Beginners (PDF – 1.4 MB) to learn more about the Genesis framework, child themes, the SEO functionality of Genesis and more.

To YOUR Success,

P.S. If you would rather let professionals install Genesis and a child theme for you, check out my QuickSourcing™ services – me and my Team can do it for you.

On nearly all my own sites, including nearly all sites I create for clients, I use the Genesis framework with child themes to get the layout and look wanted.

I love the flexibility of Genesis with child themes. They are very well coded, easy to use and so flexible!

I personally own the StudioPress Pro licence, well worth the $299 I paid.  However, the price on that package is going up on January 31, 2012.  If you hurry, you can get 10% off the $299 price!!

This is rare, truly – StudioPress doesn’t put out coupons often.

Buy StudioPress Pro today, and use coupon code TEN to get 10% off.