We have come up with a good analogy for SEO that The Urban Twist authors can use to help them rank better in search results and earn more money in the process.
In this article, we are going to view SEO and your articles as a Christmas tree. I think it will help to explain the process of SEO and provide a nice visual to make it all click.
This tree is pretty plain and boring. Nobody would want to make this plain Jane tree the centerpiece of their home during the holidays. People would not be impressed with it by any means. If your article looks like this tree, plain and boring, it is not something that’s attractive to the search engines. It needs to be jazzed up.
Primary Keyword = The Star
The star on the top of the Christmas tree is the focal point of many decorated Christmas trees. The tree itself is cone shaped, so the eyes naturally are led to the top. Even though the star on top of the tree makes up a very, very small portion of the finished product, it is the focal point.
For this example, we are going to use “bad credit personal loans” as the star of the tree and the focus of your article. Let’s add that star now onto the tree.
As you can imagine, “bad credit personal loans” has a lot of competition. Of course, with a tree or article that looks like this, still really plain without any substance, there is no reason that anyone would think it was beautiful.
We need to add to the tree to make it look beautiful for the search engines and the people entering our home to look at our tree, so they are impressed and have a reason to stop and gaze at it. We want the tree in our house to look nicer than everyone else’s, so we have to jazz it up a little.
A Little Repetition
While the landscape of on-page SEO has changed, it is still a very good idea to have some repetition in your article, where you use the primary keyword in the body of the article. Since many tree decorations we hang on the branches are little stars, we are going to add just a few of them.
The tree is starting to look a little nicer. People that visit us in our homes will take a little longer look at our tree. Search engines will like it a little bit more now, but it still isn’t a thing of beauty, so we need to do a little more work. Notice that we just have a few little star decorations on our tree with our primary keyword. There is so much more to SEO than simple repetition these days.
Secondary Keywords = Bulbs
Everyone like some nice bulbs on a Christmas tree, so we better add them to our tree. The secondary keywords help to drive traffic to our article, just as the bulbs on the tree add to the beauty and make it more appealing to everyone. It is really important to use several different types of bulbs on the tree, so it looks nice. If they were all the same, it just wouldn’t have any variety. They need to compliment the star on top, so it looks great.
Since the bulbs are in various shapes, sizes, we never know what is going to catch someone’s attention. While the star of the tree, our primary keyword, gets the most attention, our secondary keywords and bulbs will catch the eye of some people.
Internet searchers are more likely to find your article through a search that includes your primary keywords, but they could also find it by searching for your secondary keywords.
Since it takes a lot of bulbs to jazz up a tree and we never know which one will catch the attention of onlookers, we need to add several of them. We are going to add the bulbs I need money now, high risk personal loan, guaranteed approval loans, car title lenders, payday advance, and low interest personal loans, poor credit lenders.
Our tree is starting to look nice. Some people are going to stop and stare at it for a while. Search engines will start to give you a little love. It still isn’t a true beauty of a tree or article though. It needs something else.
LSI Words = Garland
The garland on a tree hugs and envelopes the entire tree, just as LSI words should do to your article. LSI Words is just a SEO term for related, similar or synonyms words. It adds body and substance to our tree and helps to fill in the imperfections and bare spots in the tree. The garland starts near the bottom and wraps around all the bulbs and secondary keywords, and spirals to the top of the star, our primary keyword. It helps to fill the tree in, so it looks full and beautiful.
LSI isn’t really an internet term. It’s been around for decades and predates the internet. It all boils down to mathematics called singular value decomposition (SVD). In written text, you are more likely to see certain words that correlate with each other. This is especially important since some words are spelled the same, but have different meanings. Is an apple a fruit or a brand of computer? If you use LSI words in your articles, the search engines will know the difference.
If you were to give all the information you knew about a topic you were knowledgeable in, there would be certain things you would be likely to type out for the reader. These words lend credibility to your article in the eyes of the search engines.
LSI words are words that are related to the main topic. They are not synonyms. Think about what a person in the lending industry would write if they wrote about bad credit personal loans. They would include some technical terms. Those technical terms and related LSI words would make the search engine see the article as authoritative.
The garland on the tree is the most substantial of the decorations. It hugs the entire tree and pulls it all together. Bad credit personal loans is the star of the tree, but the LSI words cover a lot of surface area and spiral to the top, so people’s eyes can view the star.
For bad credit personal loans, the LSI words could be: debt to income ratio, interest rates, banks, lending companies, promissory note, financing, finance, APR, monthly payments, credit score, collateral, etc.
You cannot possibly add every LSI word to your article and there is only so much garland you can put on a tree, so you just need to hit the highlights in the article, and cover up those bare spots on the tree. Let’s add some garland to our tree.
Now, this is a beautiful tree. It looks nice and full. Our article will appear nice and full as well to the search engines. Since search engines want to show off the best results possible, this article is much more likely to get search engine love. People you know will comment about how beautiful your tree is and tell their friends about it.
Please note that if you were to focus on being a good writer and producing non-fluff content, LSI kind of takes care of itself!
