In case you haven't heard the buzz, the latest trend, with the emergence of Web 2.0 and the evolution of the search engines, is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). In a nutshell, LSI is the process whereby the search engines, especially Google, are starting to index content in a more "human" manner.

In the beginning, search engines indexed content based upon "key words". But the implementation was awkward, and often led to some unusual results. People don't search for "computer, apple" when they want an Apple Computer – but in the old days, that was how things were indexed, and searchers often didn't find what they wanted, because it was indexed according to the first key phrase above, and not the second, more "natural" one.

These days, search engine algorithms are becoming very sophisticated, and are beginning to index pages based upon "synonomic content" – synonyms – but not in the way that a dictionary or a thesaurus uses synonyms, but the way people use them in search engines.

You know how you can visit Amazon.com and when you go to check out, you see that page that says "people who bought X product also bought Y" ? Well to a search engine, synonomic content works much the same way. It's very much like "people who searched using X term also used Y search term".

You can see a simple example of this in Google by prefacing any search term with a tilde (~). The result you will get back shows you all of the words that Google says are "related" to your primary search term. They may not be synonyms in the dictionary, but they are synonyms in the way that people actually use the terms in key word search phrases on the search engines.

If you search for "apple" on Google, you probably will get results related primarily to the computer. But if you do a refined search for "fruit" or even "pie" on the next pass, you get an entirely different set of results that is relevant to what you wanted.

That is what LSI is all about – making the search results more and more relevant, even though as many as 50% of the searches done each month are completely unique. They aren't being done by people looking for new information – they are being done by people looking for information in a new way.

NOW - what does this have to do with Theme Zoom? Well, TZ is a very sophisticated keyword research tool that uses LSI logic to help you develop "silos", which are website structures beloved by Google and its ilk. Having used TZ myself for a while now, I can tell you that this thing has awesome power, especially in the newest version, which was just released a few days ago.

Using Theme Zoom, you get keyword research based upon the real-world search behavior of thousands of people, across a large number of search engines, and the data is broken down in a much more finely grained way than you will ever see on something like the Overture Suggestion Tool. The results from TZ can be overwhelming, at first, until you learn how to filter and "read" the mountain of data it returns. (like 20,000 plus keywords for a broad market like mortgage loans, or used car auctions – all those key words and phrases are things that people have actually used recently to search for information).

The biggest drawbacks to TZ are twofold. First, there is a steep learning curve, at least in the beginning. They tell you to allow yourself at least 4 weeks before you will truly begin to understand all that is going on, and all that is possible with their powerful tools.

The second drawback is how completely fascinating the research process and resulting output can be. It is very easy to become mesmerized for hours in this research. In the long run, that is to your benefit, but it can sure be time-consuming until you learn some shortcuts and develop your own personal research style.

The whole concept of Theme Zoom is what the developers call "market research". They call it that because TZ gets its data from real world searches done by real people, and it allows you to research a market in infinite detail, looking for just the right niche, or just the right keywords to build your silos and pages around.

I can't begin to summarize the power of Theme Zoom. Even as a very dedicated user of Wordtracker for several years, I find myself doing almost all of my keyword research in Theme Zoom, which is now my preferred resource among key word research tools.

If you intend to build websites that people will find and enjoy, then you owe it to yourself to learn about LSI, "silos", and ThemeZoom

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