Rumor in search engine forums has it that Google is giving more weight to latent semantic indexing (LSI) in its latest ranking algorithm update.

What is latent semantic indexing?

LSI means that a search engine tries to associate certain terms with concepts when indexing web pages.Google has been using this concept to determine suitable ads for its AdSense service for some time now. It seems that Google is now also using this concept to improve the quality of its search results.If you search for a keyword on Google and add a tilde ~ before the search term, then you get an idea of what Google thinks about a search term.For example, if you do a semantic search for phone, Google returns Nokia as the first result. A normal search for phone returns different results. Adding a tilde to the search term seems to instruct Google to do a semantic search.

Why is this important to your SEO activities?

If Google uses this concept in its ranking algorithm (which is very likely) then its advisable that you don’t focus on a single keyword, but on a set of related keywords with your search engine optimization activities.You should optimize some of the pages on your web site for keywords that are synonymous with the keyword you’re targeting.When you exchange links with other web sites, make sure that you vary the link text to your web site so that it contains different variations and synonyms of your keyword.Latent semantic indexing helps search engines to find out what a web page is all about. It basically means to you that you shouldn’t focus on a single keyword when optimizing your web pages and when getting links. The web pages on your web site should be related and focus mainly on a special topic while using different words that describe the topic. Use variations of your keyword and synonyms. That makes it easier for search engines to determine the topic of your site.

Local Search is becoming big.  This is a good time to think about local search.   Some interesting points:

1.   Many businesses have a target audience outside their main geographical area, such as a car dealership that is physically located outside of the Chicago metro area, but still targets the Chicagometro area. "On the paid side, it is the same for both Overture and Google," said Williams. "For Overture, as long as your business is within a 100-mile radius, you can draw yourself within that radius. For ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ search engine optimization, you can optimize a page about being a Chicago-area car dealer."

2.  "Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) now emulate the pure search functionality of web search engines," said Justin Sanger, President of LocalLaunch. Sanger recommended that all business owners fill out business profiles provided by Yahoo and Verizon Superpages. Currently, these business profiles are free, and business owners can display more information in their listings for a monthly fee.

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Always remember that search engines do not consider "websites" they consider the "pages" of those websites. There should never be a debate as to which is more important between "on page" and "off page" characteristics as the truth is both are equally as important.

On Page Characteristics are anything you can effect within the construction of a single page. This includes everything that is placed in the headers, body, and on-page links (both internal and external). Special attention should be given to: Title, meta description, H1, H2…H6, <b>, <i>. Keyword proximity, keyword density and relevance..

Off Page Characteristics refer to all links (both from pages contained within your own website and from pages of other websites) that point to your specific page(s). The term "pagerank" is specifically designated to evaluate and weight "off page" criteria. Special attention should be given to: anchor text, Reference_tags, "title" attribute and "target_" etc