Latent semantic indexing (LSI), what is it?  What?s all the hype about?  Well I can tell you, LSI looks like it?s the way all the search engines will be heading.  Latent semantic indexing examines the context of the words on your page, for example if you searched for Paris Hilton, the search engines know you are talking about the lady famous for just being famous, instead of a city and a hotel chain.

It seems like the search engines having been using this type of search for sometime, why is it now there is all this hype I hear you ask.  Well the answer is pretty simple, although no-one knows the searching algorithms the search engines are using, there are a lot of rumors around the forums that Google has implanted LSI into its.

So what does that mean to you?  This means that instead of picking up on keywords throughout your site, and looking at the distribution of these words throughout your webpage, Google would be looking at the context of your site, checking for semantically similar words throughout your site, not the keywords.

How to use LSI algorithms to your advantage:

1. Don?t focus on single keywords.  Try and find words that mean the same thing, or similarly related keywords and incorporate that into your content.  Keep in mind your content still needs to make sense to the end user.
2. Optimise some of the pages on your site around words that synonymous with your keywords, or message you?re trying to convey.
3. When creating anchor text for your links keep in mind all the variations of your targeted keywords.  Use synonyms and a wide array of semantically similar words.

Latent semantic indexing will hopefully deliver more relevant results for searchers.  By using LSI search engines will be picking up the context of what your site is about, not just the keywords you put into your content.

So keep in mind variations and synonyms are your friend, so go grab that thesaurus, and happy searching.