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Latent Semantic Indexing is not something you need to know about, unless you’re doing internet marketing. But . latent semantic indexing is an important part of how a search engine like Google works. Knowing how a search engine works is key to doing internet marketing. So let’s look at how latent semantic indexing is a key component of internet marketing. Just what you will need to know about latent semantic indexing.

Since the whole term “latent semantic indexing” tends to bounce off the brain, let’s pick it apart to see what the words mean in this context. “Indexing” means compiling a list in some kind of order. A search engine goes thru each document on a website and and indexes all the words and terms. It orders them according to the “semantic” meaning of the word. Semantic is really just a fancy word for meaning, but it does suggest that there is more to the meaning of a word than the simple definition. The word “latent” reinforces the idea that there is more to it than a simple definition. “Latent” tells you that the search engine is going to look for word meanings that are not obvious.

Here’s an example of why latent semantic indexing is useful to a search engine. Take the word spot. It might refer to a dot on a page, or possibly a splotch of ink covering words on a page. It might refer to a “spot of tea”. And of course with a capital S, the word could refer to a pet dog. The same four letters make up the word, but the context of the word conveys strongly different meanings. Performing latent semantic indexing on a document allows a search engine to weigh certain types of meaning more heavily. For example, the “spot of tea” suggests a British context, so a search engine might look for additional terms that are British slang.

People may talk about a matrix that is formed by latent semantic indexing. This is because a matrix is a list of lists, and since words can have multiple meanings, it can be useful to assign more than one meaning to a word. This is even more true of phrases or terms in a document, as a group of words can expands the possible meanings more than a single word. So if a search engine assigns some kind of a number to each word for each meaning, it generates a large table of rows and columns with all of the assigned numbers. This table or array is referred to as a matrix of the latent semantic indexing.

If you are doing internet marketing, you know about SEO, or search engine optimization. This is a way to help put your website at the top of a search list when people do a query. Latent semantic indexing is a key component of SEO, so you will want your document writers to understand it. Latent Semantic Indexing — Key Concepts

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