Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)

Latent Semantic Indexing

There's a new buzzword in town..... yes another one!

Define Latent -potentially existing but not presently evident or realized

Define Semantic -relating to the study of meaning and changes of meaning.

Doesn't help much, or does it? For some time now we know that keyword density on a page has some effect, but how a page interacts with other pages and whether those pages are in the same theme is also important. So isn't "Latent Semantics" a name given to identifying a pages theme, the theme of its directly associated site and associated links.

The mere concept of themes and how pages influence each other without keyphases existing on a page is not new. The days of Google Bombing are still rife and there are examples of the practice everywhere. However Latent Semantics do explain how the search engines are filtering pages of lower influence and giving higher weighting to pages of authority.

Consider a link from another web site, the link is on a page with no particular "theme". It will carry less favour than a page for example of text, such as a Press Release with a lot of content about a theme that links in to the site.

This is how the search engines are filtering "link farms" and "free for all links". By their very nature both of these types of systems whilst generating vast numbers of links quickly, their theme is typically weak and as such do little to add to a sites importance.

Optimisation for search engines is a time consuming process, the search engines are embedding filters to clear out the "quick fixes", if offered a fast way to get links that seems too good to be true, it probably is.

M.P