What Are LSI Keywords and How Do They Affect SEO?

Table of contents:

• What are LSI Keywords?
  • Why Should You Try Out LSI Keywords?
• LSI Keywords in SEO
• How to Search for LSI Keywords?
• How to Use LSI Keywords?
• LSI Keywords in SEO – The Takeaway

What are LSI Keywords?

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are semantic keywords related to the phrases you want to use in the SEO process.

Table tennis and ping pong are synonyms and it’s worth using both of them if you want to describe a ping pong table, but they are not semantic words. For table tennis, table, balls, or paddles are LSI keywords, meaning related terms.

You may think that a user will search for a given service, product, or content by typing in a query that (in your opinion) best describes the issue. However, in real life, people often use very surprising phrases.

Sometimes, after analyzing the queries that brought users to your website, you may start to wonder what they meant and what they had in mind. That’s why, when creating content, you should use not only the phrases that seem the most relevant in a given context but also LSI keywords.

Without a shadow of a doubt, your keyword research should be based on tools like Ahrefs, or SEMrush, but for many low-profile queries, analyzing data from Google Search Console is often the only way to pinpoint important phrases.

Why Should You Try Out LSI Keywords?

With all probability, you want to reach as many Google users interested in the products or services you offer as possible. LSI keywords give you the opportunity to use various queries to find audiences trying to access the product you sell.

It’s also a sign for Google’s algorithms, whose job is to present results that are consistent with the user’s expectations – thanks to semantics, Google is able to understand the context of a given piece of content.

LSI Keywords in SEO

Let’s say you type the query “iron” into Google. The search engine will show you a popular device.

But did you really mean that? After all, iron is also an important mineral essential for making red blood cells. This is when LSI keywords come in handy, as they help Google analyze the content and search intent. If you type in “iron mineral”, Google won’t show you shops where you can buy the device. Therefore, by providing a word that has a contextual relationship with the main phrase, users can get search results meeting their expectations.

How to Search for LSI Keywords?

LSI keyword research is slightly different from traditional research, however, theoretically speaking you should use the same tools for this purpose. Nevertheless, there are also solutions created especially for finding LSI keywords.

Such phrases can also be found without using specialist tools. After typing a given query into Google, scroll down the page and you’ll see a section with “related searches”.

You can also get hints by typing your query into the search box:

Of course, it’s much easier and more convenient to use special tools that can help you quickly find needed keywords. Let’s start with the one which is designed to find LSI phrases. It’s Isigraph.com – all you have to do is type a given phrase into the search box. The tool is paid, and the cheapest package costs $27 per month.

Other popular tools you can use include:

• Google Ads Keyword Planner – you can use this one for free. All you have to do is open the tool and type in the word you’re interested in. You’ll get the results and an average monthly number of searches.

• Answer The Public – a tool that relies on hints displayed by the Google search engine when you start typing a query into the search box. You can use it for free. Just enter the word you want to check. This tool stands out thanks to its unique way of presenting results.

• Keywordtool.io – another tool that relies on Google search tips. In this case, all you have to do is type a given word into the search box. If you use the free version, the data is limited and you won’t see the average monthly number of searches of a given phrase.

How to Use LSI Keywords?

LSI keywords are used to optimize your site for these phrases. To make the process easier, you can benefit from SurferSEO that suggests a list of keywords that you should use in the text and provides the preferred density of these phrases.

If you’re about to optimize your content, make sure that keywords aren’t used unnaturally or incorrectly. It’s worth applying LSI keywords in:

• The title of the page, i.e. the <title> tag. Remember that at the beginning of the title there should always be a phrase that is the most important for the content.
• Page description, i.e. a meta description – although this description doesn’t affect website visibility, it can improve your CTR.
• In the title of the entry – usually in the H1 header.
• In other headers – preferably in H2, which are important SEO-wise.
• In the lead – it’s crucial to provide the most important phrase for a given text.
• In alt descriptions and image file names.

LSI Keywords in SEO – The Takeaway

Thanks to LSI keywords, Google’s search engine algorithm is able to better understand your content and at the same time present page visitors with results that match their expectations.

Moreover, with LSI keywords you can also make the text more attractive to the user. Such phrases allow you to approach the topic comprehensively and you can focus on elements that didn’t seem relevant before the analysis.