What Are LSI Keywords? Meaning, Examples, And Use in 2026

Gone are the days when search engines like Google used exact match keywords to process search results. Google is using a ton of new-generation methods, like LSI keywords, RankBrain, and voice search, to provide highly relevant information to searchers.

So what does it mean?

It simply means you don’t need to stuff exact-match keywords to boost your organic rankings. Using relevant, contextual keyword phrases in your articles can also help.

Here’s where the concept of latent semantic indexing comes into play.

The best part is that you’re not only satisfying Google crawlers but also providing the best information to users.

If you’re doing SEO for blogs for a while, you should already know the importance of keyword research. Hands down, finding the right keywords is the fastest way to get more organic traffic from Google.

But most people do keyword research wrong: they either find competitive keywords or too broad terms, so they don’t get much traffic even if their content is good. Using semantic keywords can fill that gap.

So let’s find out all the information that you need around LSI keywords so you can rank for multiple keywords from a single web page. Are you ready? Let’s jump into the details.

What are LSI keywords?

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are the keywords that are semantically related to your primary keyword. They are NOT intended to be synonyms, but generally are closely related words of a search query or keyword phrase.

In a nutshell, these keywords supplement the main keywords (or search queries) and provide strong contextual information to the search engines like Google.

These keywords can be

• Synonyms
• Substitutions
• Related words (to a particular phrase/word, topic, or search queries)

For example, “Python” is an LSI keyword for “programming language” and “Apple” is an LSI keyword for iPad, MacBook, iPhone, etc.

To put it simply, semantically-related keywords are used by search engines like Google, Bing, etc to gather words with a familiar meaning to give search engine users a better experience while they search.

LSI keywords examples

You can simply consider latent semantic keywords as synonyms for the keywords.

For example, “cute”, “adorable”, “appealing”, and “charming” are all different words, but they all have the same meaning.

1. If your page contains keywords like “red apple,” “shimla apple”, “apple cider”, “apple juice”, “apple calories,” etc, then Google understands that your page is most likely about the fruit.
2. Alternatively, if your page contains keywords such as “MacBook”, “iPhone XR”, “Apple stocks”, “iPad”, etc., then Google recognizes that your page is most likely about the company.

Did you get the difference?

So basically, search engines like Google look for keywords that are frequently found together because they share the same context (as mentioned in the 2 examples above).

Have a look at the following illustration for a couple of examples of these keywords.

As you can see from the above example, these semantic keywords should match the overall context of a particular topic that you want to rank for.

What are the benefits of using LSI keywords?

So why target LSI keywords? What are the benefits of using them? Let’s discuss now.

• You can rank a single page for multiple keywords (with the help of LSI keywords)
• You don’t have to keyword stuff anymore if you’re using semantically-related keywords. You can still rank for a variety of keywords without keyword stuffing, which also gives a better reading experience for your audience.
• They help Google search engine crawlers to better understand what your blog and content is all about.
• You can attract high-quality visitors from search engines by using the RIGHT kind of relevant keywords. That means, you’ll not only get targeted traffic but also your sales will go up.
• You can rank better than your competitors, who are only focusing on keyword stuffing within their content rather than using semantic keywords.

Above all, they help you boost your content’s credibility, decrease bounce rate and ultimately increase on-page time spent on your web pages.

How can LSI keywords boost your search rankings?

Previously, search engines keyword density to determine a page’s relevance.

The major issue that arose later with this approach was that most bloggers stuffed their web pages with their target keywords to get first-page rankings. It ultimately led to a bad user experience for searchers.

Here’s an example of keyword stuffing.

As you can see above, there’s no real value for searchers looking for information on “product marketing,” as the copy is completely filled with that keyword.

To address this issue, search engines have adopted more advanced methods, such as LSI, to provide users with the best experience. The LSI method helps search engines like Google better understand the context of a search query and the meaning of a page.

That’s how it can rank similar, highly relevant pages, because it improves the “relevancy” between what people search for and what they find on Google.

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How to use LSI keywords within your content for better rankings?

Your job is not done by finding relevant keywords. In fact, your job starts when you’re done with LSI keyword research. The next important thing after doing keyword research is actually using those keywords within the content so you can bring more search traffic.

Here are some of the essential on page SEO elements where you need to insert your relevant keywords to get better SEO rankings.

Quick note: Make sure to insert your semantically-relevant keywords in the following places while creating your blog’s content to increase your search engine traffic quickly.

Blog post headline

Most people don’t know the importance of title tags and they often create headlines without optimizing them for any keywords which is a big mistake. Since title tags are considered as one of the biggest search ranking factors, you must know how to optimize them without hurting your readership.

It’s always better to come up with 3 to 5 headline variations for every blog post you publish and you can use free tools like Portent content generator if you want to come up with amazing title ideas just by inserting your main keyword.

Meta description

Meta description is what people will read when they are looking for some information using search engines, which usually comes under the title tags on search results. Make sure you’re using at least one keyword (which is primarily LSI keyword) to get better rankings. Don’t over-optimize, just make it as readable as possible.

H2, H3 tags

One of the most effective ways to optimize your on-page is to use as many subheadings as possible by using H2, H3 tags, and sprinkle these relevant keywords all over them (with a variety of keyword phrases). These H2, H3 tags are highly weighted in Google search, and they will also appear if they are optimized well for particular keywords.

Image alt tags

Google gives your image alt tags as much importance as your content keyword optimization. So if you’re publishing a blog post, make sure to include as many appealing images as possible (at least one per post) and use your primary keyword within the image ALT tag to better optimize your content.

Blog post URL

Make sure your URL structure and blog post URLs are short and sweet. More importantly, your URL should include an optimized keyword to improve rankings. Your URL is what appears on your site and in search engine results, so the better you optimize it, the better the results you can get.

Keyword density

Most experts say that you don’t have to worry about keyword density, but it will definitely play some key role. But don’t go overboard: to play safe, you can keep your keyword density under 1% (1 time in 100 words with lots of LSI keyword variations, without using the exact keyword phrase repeatedly).

Linking

Internal linking helps search engine crawlers to crawl your pages deeply, which is suitable for both SEO and your site’s indexing. Whenever you publish a new blog post, make sure to add relevant links to your old posts.

Similarly, start linking out to other bloggers’ content, which is highly useful and relevant to your blog’s topic. Later, you can use a blogger outreach strategy to get incoming links, which is a great promotional tactic to get links, traffic, and build relationships.

Length of the blog post

The length of your blog really plays a huge role. Take our own blog, for example: we have quadrupled our search traffic within 3 years by publishing detailed content of 2000+ words.

So if you want to rank for these semantically relevant keywords, start spending more time and money on creating high-quality long-form content (and it will also become easier for you to sprinkle these keywords if you’re writing long content).

Here’s a great video by Brian Dean on how to do on-page SEO better.

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How to create an LSI keyword strategy for better long-term results

Let’s now talk about the most essential thing of all: creating an LSI keyword strategy. It is what you need if you want to find better-performing keywords to increase your search traffic and overall website sales. Here are a few of the important tips you can use to lay out a solid keyword strategy to grow your SEO and build a profitable blog.

Understand your target audience’s search intent

Here’s an example that will teach you about your target audience’s search intent.

Search intent: “apple”

Matching LSI keywords:

• iTunes
• Apple store
• Apple iPhone etc

Irrelevant semantic keywords:

• Microsoft
• Microsoft downloads
• Microsoft update etc

Always keep your main keyword in mind before doing LSI keyword research

There’s no point in doing LSI keyword research without targeting a primary keyword of your choice. So get to know what your primary keywords are before you start finding LSI keywords to grow your organic traffic.

Don’t shove your keywords within your content

Stop keyword stuffing. It is one of the bad SEO practices that can get your site penalized in Google search. Instead of shoving keywords, use them naturally and sprinkle as many long tail keywords as you can for better search rankings.

It’s not necessary to use the exact match keywords

Most bloggers use the same keyword phrases that they find while doing keyword research. It doesn’t give you good results when it comes to optimizing your posts naturally.

You don’t have to use the exact same phrase matching keywords, either. Google is smart enough to understand what your content is about and gives you better rankings if it’s valuable.

How to find LSI keywords? 5 tools explained with tutorials

So, how to find LSI keywords? To find great semantic keywords, you need access to the right tools. There are so many free tools out there, starting from Google autocomplete to LSI Graph to find related keywords. Let’s talk about each one of them so you can use whichever tool fits your budget or needs to do LSI keyword research. We’ll cover 5 tools for finding LSI keywords, listed below.

• Semrush
• LSI Graph
• Google Autosuggest
• Serpstat
• Ubersuggest

1. Using Semrush

Finding semantic keywords has been easier when you’ve access to an all-in-one SEO toolkit like Semrush. Hands down, it’s the #1 SEO tool used by around 3 million people worldwide.

Let’s first talk about how you can find latent semantic keywords with one of our favorite SEO tools, called Semrush. If you want to see the benefits of using this tool, here’s a detailed review of Semrush.

Step 1: Enter a keyword of your choice on Semrush, and it will give you a list of all the phrase matches and related keywords in its excellent tool called “Keyword Magic Tool”.

Step 2: In this example, let’s take “best fitness apps” as the keyword, and Semrush is showing the following results.

As you can see above, there are many LSI keywords with decent KD (keyword difficulty) that are showing up. Apart from that, you can also look for phrase match keywords along with their search volume, CPC, and competition.

The key to picking better keywords is to focus on finding high-value CPC and low KD (or search volume) keywords so you can increase your keyword rankings with less effort.

Step 3: The final step is to evaluate your keyword metrics by analysing the competition and picking the keywords with less competition to grow your search traffic and sales.

2. Using LSI Graph

Let’s now talk about how you can use a free tool called LSI Graph.

How to use LSI Graph keyword research tool for finding LSI keywords?

Step 1: Click on this link to visit LSI Graph tool.

Step 2: Enter a keyword of your choice that you want to find relevant keywords.

In the above example, we used the keyword “apple” and immediately the tool will suggest you a ton of keywords which are relevant to the main keyword.

Step 3: That’s it, now you can easily build a list of all the useful semantic keywords and start using them within your content for better rankings (we’ll discuss this later in the same post).

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3. Using Google Autocomplete suggestions

One of the easiest ways to find these relevant keywords is to use Google autocomplete as it is not only a free LSI keyword research tool but also gives you a lot of autocomplete suggestions that you can use to increase your search traffic.

Here’s how to use it.

Simply enter a keyword of your choice on Google search bar and Google will automatically start showing you all the related keywords that you can use to bring more traffic from Google to your sites.

In the above example, you can see that for the keyword phrase “Goa trip plan”, Google autocomplete is showing a ton of these relevant keywords that you can use within your content or landing pages if you’re dealing with a site which covers those keywords.

Apart from the Google’s autocomplete feature, you can also use Google’s another search feature called “Google related searches” that you normally find at the bottom of the search results pages.

Here’s how it looks like;

In the above illustration, you can see that for the same keyword phrase, Google related searches is showing a ton of useful and highly relevant keywords at the bottom of the search results page.

Likewise, you can use the above both free tools by Google to find a variety of semantic keywords to increase your search traffic and website sales.

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4. Using Serpstat

If you’re looking for an affordable yet all in one SEO toolkit, Serpstat is exclusively for you as it offers you a wide range of tools to find ultimate keywords to outrank your competitors.

Here’s a step by step tutorial on how to use Serpstat to find semantic keywords.

Step 1: First things first. You need to get access to this tool (you can click here to activate 7 days free trial from Serpstat, which is exclusively available for Bloggers Passion readers for a limited time).

Step 2: Once you’ve setup your account, go to their dashboard and enter any keyword phrase of your choice from “Related Keywords” tab which is under “Keyword Research” section.

Here’s how it looks like;

As you can see above, there are a ton of related semantic keywords that you can find using Serpstat keyword research tool.

It also gives you keyword metrics like search volume, CPC and competition in PPC to filter out your keyword campaigns.

Step 3: You can also click on the above related keywords (individually) if you want to get even more detailed and comprehensive semantic keyword ideas for your target keyword phrase.

Here’s how it looks like;

So there you go. That’s how you can find a ton of semantic keywords using Serpstat.

5. Ubersuggest

If you’re looking for a free keyword research tool, Ubersuggest, run by Neil Patel, is the BEST fit for you. It’s absolutely free to use, and you can get as many keyword ideas as you want using this fantastic tool.

Here’s how to use Ubersuggest to find relevant semantic keywords for any search phrase.

Step 1: Go to the Ubersuggest tool and enter any keywords of your choice.

Step 2: Simply click on the Related section to find all the relevant keywords to your target keyword phrase. Here’s what it looks like;

As you can see above, we entered “paleo diet” as an example to get semantic keyword phrases. Immediately, when we clicked on the “Related” section, the tool showed us all the relevant keyword phrases.

Step 3: Pick your keywords selectively according to search volume and CPC. Ubersuggest tool gives you keyword metrics such as monthly search volume, CPC, PD (Paid difficulty), and SD (SEO difficulty) to evaluate keywords.

Just make sure to find and target keywords with fewer searches and higher CPC for better results.

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Final Thoughts On Semantic Keywords

Finding semantically related keywords is the most effective way to optimize your blog posts naturally. Finding these keywords is not that hard when you have access to the right tools like Semrush, LSI Graph, etc. Just make sure to find out what tool works best for you and stick with it.

LSI relevant keywords are great for 2 reasons: they allow you to optimize your content for Google naturally and also help Google to better understand what your content is all about.

So what are your thoughts about semantic keywords? Do you have a strategy for doing LSI keyword research? If you’ve any questions, do let us know in the comments.

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FAQs About Latent Semantic Keywords

Let’s now talk about some of the frequently asked questions around latent semantic keywords in SEO so you can better understand their usage.