There's a new game in town when it comes to how websites can gain search engine attention. The old ways of keyword stuffing, using single phrases to optimize and concentrating heavily on incoming links are fading away as a newer, more holistic system for judging content comes into its own. This system is Latent Semantic Indexing and it has webmasters scrambling to keep up.

Latent semantic indexing is a Google creation that can better read the content on web pages to view them to discover their overriding theme. Latent semantic indexing stands for "hidden meaning" indexing. It is a more sophisticated means of measuring sites and their pages to figure out what really makes them tick. Although this new system doesn't mean webmasters need to throw their old SEO babies out with the bathwater, it does mean they need to make sure their content makes sense and shows a little more depth.

The history behind latent semantic indexing is rather interesting. Google's current ranking system, which relies on incoming links (or votes) and keywords to scan pages for relevancy when computer users do searches has been known for penalizing perfectly good sites. The system was set up to scan for relevance and quality. In the process, it has a habit of knocking new sites and those which add too much content too quickly. Although some of these sites, naturally, are those that result from link farming and quick keyword stuffed content generators, not all are unplanned fabrications.

The old way wasn't working, so Google sought out to fix it. Latent semantic indexing was the answer. While a lot of the old measures do matter (i.e. incoming links), they don't as much with latent semantic indexing.

Under latent semantic indexing, sites that want to gain ranking need to make sure they have content that's fresh, updated, keyword rich and relevant. The system is meant to give those who use keyword searches pages that better represent what it is they were looking for instead of those that happen to have bunches of incoming links. All in all, the system is a more fair way of measuring what's on the Internet in regard to relevancy and quality. It also fits Google's mission better.

The time of Google placing most of its focus on incoming links to rank sites is fast becoming a thing of the past. While incoming links still are very important, they aren't as important as they were. They can be used to break "ties" in search results, but depth and theme of pages is more vital.

Latent semantic indexing doesn't mean that publishers need to throw out everything they've done in the past. What it means is that sites that want to rank well need to make sure their content is relevant, has depth and is actually useful. In essence, those sites that do their jobs and do them well should fare just fine. Those that keyword stuff and link farm might not do as well on rankings.

The trick to getting ahead now falls on what good webmasters have long done. It's really nothing more than creating good content. Sites that do so should rank better for their relevant keywords. Those that don't, won't.