The days of keyword stuffing, single phrase optimization and concentrating only on incoming links to gain traffic are slowly being phased out as a more holistic approach to judging website content comes online. This new concept has many webmasters hopping, and it should. Latent semantic indexing is quickly becoming the wave of now.

Latent semantic indexing, is a Google driven creation that's meant to better gauge the content of a web page in relation to the entire site to discover the overall theme. It is a more sophisticated measure of what sites and their pages are all about. While it doesn't mean webmasters need to completely retool all of their keyword optimization efforts, it does mean depth needs to be a greater consideration.

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 surfers 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.

Google wanted a better way, and found one. Latent semantic indexing is meant to scan the overall theme of a site, so as not to penalize those sites that have fresh, relevant and good content even if they do happen to pop up over night.

This new focus puts an emphasis on quality and freshness of content to help sites gain higher ranking position. In essence, latent semantic indexing is meant to give a searcher the best possible site to meet their needs based on relevant keywords and comprehensive coverage and not just incoming links.

This system basically presents a more fair way to give search engine users the pages they really want. It does what Google has always tried to do - provide higher quality, more relevant results.

The old days of Google putting 80 percent of its emphasis on incoming links and 20 percent on the actual site itself are coming to an end. Incoming links will always have relevance, especially in regard to breaking search "ties," but they may not carry the same weight as before. This can make it a bit easier for those who work on their sites with an emphasis on quality to see real results.

What all of this means to web publishers is that those who have done and continue to do their jobs correctly will have a better chance of shining with latent semantic indexing. Those who keyword stuff, create nonsensical content and spend a lot of time using link farms likely will not.

The key to getting ahead in the new age of Google search falls on quality. Sites that provide useful and relevant information in regard to their content will be likely to do better on searches. Those that cut corners could find themselves at the bottom of the search totem pole.