How Search Engines Determine Theme Relevance?

April 16, 2008

Determine Theme Relevance is a major factor when you are SEO your site. Let’s say if you have a blog about “X widget” and then after so many years you want to write something that is off-topic and is not related to your theme “X widget”. Does search engines will put your blog post as a spam because you write sometimes off-topic? After I wrote about What is latent symentic Indexing I received some emails from fellow bloggers saying that Stay off the LSI bandwagon.

But from facts I still believe that LSI still play a major factor here, Google in April 2003 Acquired Applied Semantics and I am sure that LSI concept have been improved by the mastermind group of Google so it can be more accurate. I will give some examples (facts) in this blog:

If you see there is more than one niche in this blog so if you came here you can see some of them like Coupon Codes category is OFF-TOPIC (non-relevant) to the main theme of Googlelady. Also if you talk to someone about Googlelady what you will tell them? Is a Make Money Online blog? Or an Affiliate Marketing Blog? or is about webmasters tips blog? Here in Googlelady there is more than one theme and you know why? Because I like them! making money online, Affiliate marketing, Blogging, Hosting and Domain names, Search engines…

So if I like those topic should I open more than one blog and each of them one niche? I don’t think so. I write for my readers (YOU) and what I like to write and not for Google or any other search engine. But also Google have to know that this blog is not a spam blog because I have more than one theme here, and Google knows that Googlelady.com is worth and that’s why this blog is ranked very well in any of the articles that I wrote. Each article that I write is being indexed and ranked well after 2 minutes in avarage. So how someone can be ranked well if they have more than one theme?

Here is when Google, Yahoo or MSN applies LSI. They check how much the topic of your article is relevant to your blog/site theme and decide if they index it or not. I will give an example of some of my OFF-TOPIC articles:

In September 13, 2007. I wrote a review about Wtdirect which you can open a saving account. Which is absolutly non-relevant to this blog. When this article was published, after 2 minutes the articles was ranked and indexed at the top #9 and then #2 with that keyword “Wtdirect review”
Then in September 18, 2007. I wrote about 15 Search engine optimization tips and mentioned and linked the Wtdirect review with this post (relevant linking) read the article and you will know why I linked it
Then the article dissapeared from the keywords results and I thought that I was hitted by something I called “Theme Relevance penalty”.
At the start of next month on October 1, 2007. Again I wanted to test if I can get indexed again and get out of what many webmaster calls “Sandbox” or what I call “Theme relevance Penalty” and published this Post. Linking my Wtdirect review and 15 Search engine optimization tips articles. One the article that I want to rank well and the other one that is linked to wtdirect article.
After a week or so, the article has been backed up and showing at the top #2 of my desired keyword. Even now the article sometimes is ranked as #1 with “Wtdirect review” depends on which version of Google you are.

My point here is that most of search engines still use LSI to see if one of the topics is relevant to your blog theme and get indexed. The solution will be, let’s say that the review is A and the second article which you link and mention the review is B and then a more general topic is C (like the top posts that I made in october 1) and the last one (This article that you are reading now) is D.

B Links to A and then C links to A & B and D links to A,B & C.

The Result

the result of wtdirect ranking

Of course we are talking here that LSI search engine algorithm decides if you deserve to be indexed to their Search Engine or not. To rank well Link Building play a MAJOR factor here. But if any search engine decide that you don’t deserve to be indexing by certain keyword (because is not relevant to your site) and have thousands of backlinks to that article you will not be ranked well or even indexed.