Do LSI keywords even matter in 2019?

[TomSnow]

Sprinkling your content with keywords that are different from your main keyword but mean the same thing is a popular idea. Some think it gives Google better context about your article's meaning.

But does it actually increase your chances of ranking?

Google released a research paper in 2016 in which they reveal "two novel techniques that can discover semantically meaningful topics in search queries." The first says that "word co-occurrence clustering generates topics from words frequently occurring together." I'm assuming this means they're finding different keywords that mean the same or similar thing based on how often they occur together.

Some SEOs think this means using LSI keywords in your content will help your chances of ranking.

Here's the thing...

Clark Boyd wrote an article on Search Engine Land saying that's bologna. He states there is no evidence that LSI keywords will help your SEO.

At the same time, there's no evidence that it doesn't...

And the research paper, unless I'm misreading it, seems to suggest there might be.

Anyone care to offer their opinion on the subject?

Thanks!

[aristotle]

Sprinkling your content with keywords that are different from your main keyword but mean the same thing is a popular idea.
...
But does it actually increase your chances of ranking?

Most likely it makes only a tiny difference at most.

That being the case, you should write for your readers, not for Google. A good writer can usually choose the right word -- sometimes it's the targeted keyword, sometimes it's a synonym of that keyword.

In other words, don't purposefully "sprinkle in" unnecessary synonyms when the targetd keyword is a better choice.

[StoneSolid]

When properly writing a nice article, you'll use the LSI keywords one way or another. Proper writer will not repeat the same words, specially not in the same complex sentence.

Example:
Fire burns and you watch the blaze #fire #burns #blaze
Jenny is sprinting. Her running speed is very fast. #sprinting #running

From my personal experiences... google is killing that off, and I believe it is related to the slow death of long tail keywords.

My example would be like this:
fire widget - I got some backlinks with related anchors
burning widget - mentioned in article
blazing widget - mentioned in article

I used to rank for all three but now I rank just for the first one.
In such scenarios, for lesser keywords like "blazing widget", my rank probably went to "blazing whatever"


Good example of that is my latest google search:
For the first time ever, in google analytics, I noticed real time traffic coming from "Medium: /Drive-"

I went to hell and back to google search what that is and in most cases the results didn't even contain the keyword "drive" (checked through word search on pages I clicked from google serps).
Google simply delivered results based on whatever the MOST JUICY part of my query contains, ignoring the lesser keyword.

So yeah.. it is what it is. Dumbed down search.
Build backlinks, don't stress it too much about content finesse.

[JesterMagic]

Completely agreed with you StoneSolid. Years ago I found the results were fairly different for different queries like "sprinting" and "running". These days Google will return very similar results for these 2 keywords which has allowed the big brands to take over more in the serps.

[StoneSolid]

I just did a google search for: running

Most top results are indeed about running, but also several of them are coming from nytimes and such. Cool articles but one would think that there are higher authority sites on the running subject?

Near end of page 1 is where the fun begins.
- results become more and more full of running shoes and such web shops
- less and less things about running as we go down
- middle page 2 even got a FoxNews politics article about Steele dossier, because it got the term 'runningscared' in the title and H1

FoxNews appearing there really proves my claim - ranking is calculated sitewide, content is of lesser importance, and big brands can rank for whatever for merely having the keyword in the article, even more so if it is in the title.

We could also argue if web shops even belong on such a clear intent query as running.

Regarding sprinting on the other hand, you don't really need to see any organic result, google made sure of that - [imgur.com ]

[RedBar]

I just did a google search for: running

No articles about vehicles or engines or is that a Brit thing?

Nothing about testing?

I've not even looked!

[Dimitri]

Single-generic-keyword search might not be very pertinent. Also, without defending Google or other search engine, if a search is too generic, it's not surprising to propose pages with variants.

Try "running a marathon", or "running linux within windows", "running out of ideas", etc...