SEO for Authors Part4 - LSI Keywords

We're on to Part 4 of the SEO for Authors Series. This part goes a bit deeper into using keywords.

Okay, I can hear you mumbling, "What the heck is LSI keywords? Aren't regular keywords enough?"

Before you start to bite your nails, LSI keywords sounds complicated but it’s NOT at all.

We’ll get to that in a second though.

First, let’s discuss why you’re blogging.

If you’re a blogger or content writer, who are you writing for?

If you answered the reader. You get the jackpot.

But, even if you think you’re writing for the reader, in the back of your mind you know you need to please the search engines also.

So, which is it?

Should you be writing for the reader of the search engines?

You’ve got to write for both, because if the search engines can’t quickly find, understand, and index your content they won’t be able to use it in their search results. This means the reader won’t get a chance to see your article.

Okay, this does create a bit of a dilemma, right?

Well, not really.

You can write powerful content that’s helpful to your reader while being search engine friendly. It’s a simple matter of using basic SEO techniques.

I’m guessing most of you reading this article know about keywords. And, you know they’re an important element that allows the search engines to find and index your content. It’s keywords that online searchers use for their search queries.

While your reader is your number one concern, appeasing Google comes in a close second.

But, there’s another little problem: 

Google doesn’t like you using the same keywords throughout your content. If you do this, Google will assume you’re doing it for ranking.

This doesn’t work. In fact, you could get a ‘slap on the hand’ for unethical SEO practices.

Instead, the power-blogger uses LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords.

Yep, another marketing acronym.

LSI keywords are simply synonyms for keywords. They can also be other words or phrases that are closely related to your ‘original’ keyword.

According to Web CEO, “LSI keywords are words and phrases that are semantically related to each other. They include not only synonyms or keywords with similar meanings. They are often keywords that are commonly found together.” (1)

Suppose your keyword is “book marketing.”

There are a number of topics that may fall under that keyword, such as:

- Author platform
- Book promotion
- Selling books
- Author website
- Book reviews
- Book signings

It’s the LSI keywords in your article that will allow Google to scan your content and better understand what it’s about. This in turn makes it easier for Google to index the content and use it as the results of a relevant search query . . .  as long as Google believes your content is quality.

An example of this strategy in action is my article:
Shaun the Sheep and Marketing with Animation

Shaun the Sheep is an animated kids’ movie with no words. I used it as the basis for an article on animation and marketing. While the title might be catchy to readers, it may have been a bit confusing for search engines.

But, the article itself has lots of LSI and other terminology that is search engine friendly and gives them the information they need to know exactly what the article is about and which search queries it’s relevant to.

Next time you’re writing a blog post or web copy, think of the LSI keywords you can use.

To find LSI keywords related to your primary keyword, check out this free tool:
LSI Graph

Along with finding those LSI words, your blog posts should be easy to read, understandable, and helpful for your audience.

TO READ ALL THE ARICLES IN THE SEO FOR AUTHORS SERIES, CHECK OUT OUR WORKSHOPS PAGE:
http://www.writersonthemove.com/p/workshops.html

References:

(1) https://www.webceo.com/blog/long-tail-vs-lsi-keywords-which-do-you-need-to-increase-website-traffic/

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children’s author and children’s ghostwriter as well as the founder and editor-in-chief of Writers on the Move. She is also an author/writer online platform instructor with WOW! Women on Writing.

If you need help getting your author platform off the ground or want to get it soaring, check out Karen’s 4-week, interactive, eclass through WOW! Women on Writing: Build Your Author/Writer Business

MORE ON BOOK MARKETING

SEO for Authors Series Part1: The Basics

Keywords and Search Engines (What Every Author Should Know)

5 Good Reasons to Secure Your Site

Keywords and Search Engines (The Bare-Bottom Basics Every Author Should Know)

If you’re online trying to sell something or even simply working to generate visibility, chances are you’ve heard of the term ‘keyword.’

Keywords are simply words or phrases that people use to search for things online.

So, suppose I wanted to look up ‘horse breeds’ for a story I’m writing. I’d input ‘horse breeds’ in a Google (or other search engines, like Bing and Yahoo) search box.

Google will scour its millions of bits of information to find content (blog posts or other web pages) that it feels will be the best answer for that search query – that keyword.

But, to make it more understandable, you should know the very basics of SEO (search engine optimization).

According to Wordtracker.com, “There are three pieces of software that together make up a search engine: the spider software, the index software, and the query software.”

Search engines, like Google, have ‘spiders’ that find new information – new web pages. This might be your new blog post, a new sales page, or new content on an existing web page.

All the new information the spiders gather is given to indexing software. This software analyzes words and word/link combinations to determine what the content is about. The information is then sorted and stored. There it’s ready to be picked up by Google in response to a person’s search query. Say my ‘horse breeds’ one.

So, as mentioned, the spider software finds the new content, gives it to the indexing software which stores it and makes it ready to supply to the query software.

It’s the index software that actually figures out what the content is about.

When I input ‘horse breeds’ into a Google search box, the query software takes over. It goes to all the information stored in the index software to find the best answer to my query.

You might think of it as a filing system in an office. A new document is created (from found sources) and stored in a filing cabinet, in a specific place. When that document is needed, the query software knows exactly where to find it in the filing cabinet. It is retrieved and ready to use.

Pretty simple, right.

So, what about keywords.

Well, while the spider and index software are very sophisticated and can get the gist of your new content just by its terminology, keywords make their job a bit easier.

While keywords are not overly powerful anymore, they still make the finding and indexing process easier.

Going back to my ‘horse breed’ keyword, if a web page matches that keyword, and Google believes that web page has valuable information related to ‘horse breeds,’ it will use that web page as the results of my search query.

And, what’s amazing, this all happens in a fraction of a second. It’s hard to believe that millions or billions of bits of information can be scoured and the best results are served up in under a second.

And, considering that Google processes approximately 40,000+ search queries per second, it’s mind-boggling.

References:
http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/keyword-research/getting-started/keyword-basics-part-1-how-search-engines-work

Karen Cioffi is a children's ghostwriter and author/writer online platform instructor for WOw! Women on Writing.

You can connect with Karen at:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/KarenCV
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingforchildrenwithkarencioffi/
GoolgePlus: https://plus.google.com/+KarenCioffiVentrice/about

This article was originally published at:
http://www.articlewritingdoctor.com/2016/05/keywords-and-search-engines-the-bare-bottom-basics/

MORE ON WRITING AND BOOK MARKETING

Helping Children Find the Main Story Idea
Are You Living the Writer’s Life?
4 Social Media Marketing Tips to Being More Productive

SEO and Website Ranking - Inside Website Traffic ‘Visit Lengths’

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a key element in driving website traffic to your site and ranking in the search engines. But, simply getting traffic isn’t enough. Along with getting that traffic, there are other factors that search engines look at when ranking your site. One of those elements is ‘visit lengths.’

According to Statcounter.com, visit lengths are considered “the time between when a visitor accesses your first webpage of their visit, and when they access the last.” While this particular measure isn’t 100 percent accurate, it’s pretty close and provides important information about your visitors and what they’re doing.

This information allows you to see “just how much ‘pull’ and ‘interest’ your website is generating for your visitors.”

So, why is this SEO information important?

Put simply, the longer a visitor stays, the better standing you’ll have with the search engines.

If you were to check your statistics, chances are the majority of your site’s traffic stays for less than five seconds. Google and the other search engines take note of this. It can be considered that your website or its content isn’t valuable enough to hold visitors. Your lower rated ‘pull’ and ‘interest,’ will cause a lower website ranking.

As a measuring stick, Statcounter measures ‘visit lengths’ in increments of:

• Less than 5 seconds
• From 5 seconds to 30 seconds
• From 30 seconds to 5 minutes
• From 5 minutes to 20 minutes
• From 20 minutes to an hours
• Longer than an hour

If you can hold a visitor for over 30 seconds you’re doing pretty good. Each increment beyond that demonstrates a rise is your website’s ‘pull’ and ‘interest’ capabilities.

At this point, you may be wondering how you can get traffic to stay on your site beyond 5 minutes, which will give your rankings a boost.

Well, how long does it take you to read one article?

If that article is informative, a visitor will want to know what else of value you have on your site. This leads the visitor further and deeper into your site. She’ll look at older titles and read more articles of interest. I’ve been on sites where I’ve read three or four articles, causing me to go deeper and deeper into those sites.

This is how ‘pull’ and ‘interest’ work. A visitor is pulled in by the informative and interesting content. The easier it is to find additional relevant quality content, the longer you’ll hold that visitor’s attention  . .  and viewing time.

There are two basic and easy ways to hold a visitor’s attention and increase your website ranking:

1. Create embedded links within your content. For example: if you have the word ‘marketing’ in your article, link that word to another article on marketing within your site.

2. At the end of your article include three or four additional article titles and link them directly to the articles.

So, the next time you’re posting an article to your site, take the extra few minutes to include links to other articles within your site. This is a proven method of engaging and holding your visitors, thereby increasing your site’s ranking.

Originally published at:
http://www.karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com/2012/08/seo-and-website-ranking-inside-website.html

~~~~~
More on Marketing

Are Your Writing and Marketing Efforts Really Productive?
Selling Your Book - 2 Steps Toward Success
5 Tips to Writing Your Author Bio