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An SEO Myth: Don’t Use LSI

Just a quick post on some seo ‘rule’ I stumbled today somewhere in the WWW.


“Don’t include all the (LSI) related terms in your article because Google is good and will see through this and penalize you“.

In my unending quest to become better and better at on-page seo, I read up on any post that preaches something related to the subject. I stumbled on one that states the above “DON’T” rule. I’ve probably met one like it before but only now have I the idea to react after having done some swimming in the www for a year.

It is rules like these that give me reason to doubt other seo preachers as well. Are these rules born out of their experiences? Or, are these born out of their desire to fool us newbies into buying their WSOs, their seo ebooks, their seo courses, etc.

Firstly, if Google does see through the intentional inclusion of all LSI terms in the content, wouldn’t Google also see through all other established and much used SEO techniques such as:

  • Use a domain name related to the keyword
  • Putting the title (with the keywords in it e.g. ‘wireless‘) in h1 tags
  • Making sure your keywords are in the first 50 or so words in the first paragraph.
  • Make sure to repeat the keywords at least three times in the whole article
  • etc.

Google is good, I think I can assume that to be true. If what the gurus are saying is true (about Google seeing through oft-used seo techniques), all these established SEO techniques which the ‘gurus’ have been preaching, and abused by money-hungry marketers, all these years would have been considered by Google and given the proper snob action too.

Lastly, they probably have some legitimate experiences that led them to float this “don’t” (among their other many don’ts). Thing is I’ve seen this “Don’t” being used as a “Do” by one webmaster (well, I know at least one, there might be more) and nothing of the doom scenario happened to her site. In fact, it’s happily swaying in the cool breeze up there at the top of the Google serp. And what’s more, she learned this technique from another ‘guru’. See, even gurus themselves contradict each other. 🙂

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Wonder Wheel : LSI

Just thought of throwing in a few lines about something I’ve learned yesterday.  It’s not new. I am actually wondering why I only learned about it now.


It’s about this Wonder Wheel tool from google that I guess is synonymous with this LSI thingy that a lot of seo guys are going loco about.  For those who haven’t heard or seen the wonder wheel, you can find it by inputting your search term or phrase into google, say ‘dog diapers’. Once google returns a new page of search results, you’ll find a ‘+ Show Options…‘ link on the top-left corner just above the first search result item. If you click on that, it will update the page with a left-side bar containing a few more links that you can use to make your search even more specific. One of the links, as you can see in the image below is the wonder wheel.

wonderwheel1

Clicking on the Wonder wheel link will bring up a figure reminiscent of a mind-mapping, or brain-storming technique I’ve seen somewhere before. The words at the tips of the spokes surrounding the main phrase ‘dog diapers’ are related keywords or keyphrases that google thinks are relevant (and thus we should think so too) words that it should also find in your site if you want to rank in the ‘dog diapers’ phrase. Clicking on one of those related phrase links will update the figure into the one shown below where another wheel appears showing its own set of related words.

wonderwheel2

This graphical representation of the semantic relationship between keywords is a very nifty seo tool as far as my neophyte seo mind is concerned. (Author’s note: I hate to to repeat the words ‘neophyte’, ‘beginner’, ‘newbie’ in my posts but I can’t escape the fact that I am presently exactly that. Hopefully, a couple of years from now, I could make a post without using these ‘keywords‘(?)  🙂  anymore). Note also that this blog isn’t exactly something I am seo-conscious at the moment, so you’ll definitely not find any traces of me practicing these things right now. Here, like extremejohn is saying, I’m ‘just writing to write and being natural doing it‘***. However, in another project of mine, I am certainly putting this knowledge to the test.


If you have some more ideas in maximizing the use of this information, you can always comment below and help us newbies out.

***ExtremeJohn’s comment in another post.