LSI is in fact important in the realm of SEO, especially as the search engines get better at separating the “good” backlinks from the “bad” when ranking sites.  Over time, good content will trump good link strategies – as it should – and with any luck the transition away from keyword-centric optimization will rid us of writing  like this:

Google Money Making
All over the internet people are interested in Google Money Making.  Google Money Making strategies are important to find in your search for Google Money Making.  [...]

Comment #1 by:  DefinitelyNotTheAuthor
Thank you for these interesting Google Money Making thoughts.

So yes, I’m saying that more sophisticated semantic indexing from the search engines is a relatively good thing.  So why the title?  Where does the cynicism come in?

In this case my cynicism is addressed toward the growing body of writing regarding how to make your writing LSI friendly.  Because you don’t write for search engines, you write for people, and the LSI takes care of itself.  If what you’ve been writing doesn’t use a variety of terms to avoid excessive repetition, doesn’t use words that provide context and depth, then, well, how can I put this nicely?  Your writing is probably utter crap.  Successful semantic indexing is a by-product of writing that is readable, interesting, and well structured, and even those who don’t inherently value that for its own sake can certainly agree that any article that the reader clicks away from after quickly discerning that it’s a mess is not very likely to lead to a lot of responses to advertising on the page.

So don’t spend a lot of time worrying about LSI.  Worry instead about being entertaining and informative and readable by actual human beings.  When you’re successful at that, good LSI will just happen.

The new job (at a site with tightly controlled and monitored internet access, so no more lunchtime/downtime writing) and life in general have limited my online work time lately, and when I have had time to put into earning efforts, it’s been divided in various degrees between no less than five site ideas I’m working on – several of which require some custom programming.  That’s in addition to monitoring BarlRol an doing a little promotion of my existing work here and there.  The end result is very little tangible progress on any front – I need to pick an area to focus on and stick with it for a while.

In the meantime, my Infobarrel articles are gradually getting more hits and a few clicks, and I’ve had five articles go Featured.  When I do manage to squeeze out an article, I must be doing something right, because out of only twenty-something posts – less than 10 of which have been submitted for Feature consideration – five have made the cut.  The problem is, as I’ve mentioned before, that I’m lousy at writing stuff that attracts ad-clickers and Amazon-buyers.

Every user who’s entered an AdSense “pub ID” on their account and created at least three posts or journals will now have their ID embedded in the Google ads on their journal/post pages 80% of the time (unless they’re the current logged in user – Google frowns on viewing/clicking your own ads).

When existing users refer new people to the site by appending “/ref/username” to any normal BarlRol URL, their referrals’ work will show their Adsense ID 10% of the time.

So, for example, if user intellifax (to give her a little link boost, since she’s the most active user so far), could send potential members to the “About” page this way:

http://barlrol.com/about/ref/intellifax/

Alternatively if she wanted to send someone to her post about planning for ski trips in Austria, but wanted her referral ID attached in case someone visiting that page decided to sign up, she would use:

http://barlrol.com/lifestyle/planning-a-ski-trip-in-austria-infobarrel/ref/intellifax

If you’ve already discovered this new feature, please double-check your referral IDs as they were briefly displayed incorrectly – make sure you’re using “/ref” instead of “/refid” !

In other news, big changes are coming to BarlRol (already)!  The new day job has kept me busy, but I’ve been carving out time to dust off my PHP programming skills to build referrals and AdSense sharing into the software that drives the site.  I’m hoping to launch the new features by the weekend.

The owner of Seekyt has responded to this in two ways:

First, where there were previously Google ads on Seekyt, there are now ads from Chitika.  Realistically, those ads probably aren’t going to pay as well as Google ads did for the users who choose to keep their content on Seekyt.  It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Chitika; it’s simply not Google, and can’t demand the same kind of pricing from its advertisers as the giant double-O’d monster of internet advertising can. Still, with Chitika ads given prominent placement on the page instead of tacked on in some out-of-the-way corner far from the Google ad section, I think many Seekyt users may be pleasantly surprised by their earnings under the new system.  (All other affiliate links from Seekyt are still working, as well.)  For this reason, and for another I’ll discuss below, I recommend staying with Seekyt as one source of income if you’re already there, and trying it out if you’re not.

Secondly, a new sister site for Seekyt has been launched:  TopicSpotter.  This new site will work similarly to the “old” Seekyt, with Adsense revenue available at the same great ratios (70% of the ads shown on your work use your ID, and 25% of the ads on your referrals’ pages use it as well) and more active moderation of submitted content.

This should serve as a wake-up call to both the users and administrators of the big content sites on several levels.  Creating good, well-written, useful content – and speaking up when we see duplication or garbage that looks spun or worse – is the most important step we can take in support of the sites that support us, and guarding against bad content is the primary (and likely most time-consuming) task the site administrators need to take on constantly and consistently.

It also underscores the need for diversification, which I’ve harped on here before just a little, but not nearly enough.  The simple fact is that relying too heavily on a single writing site, or a single source of ad revenue, is a recipe for disaster.  As Seekyt users discovered, it can go away in the blink of an eye through no fault or action of your own.  And that’s another reason why I still plan to use and recommend Seekyt; because while Chitika may not be Google, it’s also not Google.  And for the sake of diversity, in terms of your own income streams as well as in the broader marketplace, that’s a Very Good Thing.

Join BarlRol!

In the process of playing with SquidooI came across a bunch of sites that are essentially “Digg.com for lenses” – where writers can create links to their Squidoo posts and have them voted on, etc.  These are nice for back-linking, sharing, and promotional efforts.

I like Squidoo and plan to make some use of it as part my efforts to diversify across multiple income sources, but my real “home” as far as writing sites has thus far been InfoBarrel.  So I decided that IB needed a Digg-alike of its own, and along the way I decided that Wizzley and Seekyt support would be nice, too – they’d add some variety, and help some up-and-coming sites, while avoiding a deluge from the hugest of writing hubs.

So taking advantage of the free time offered by my current state of unemployment, I built the site myself.  It’s called BarlRol – pronounced “barrel roll” and spelled that way because a) all the cool sites are spelled badly these days and b) the <expletive deleted> domain squatters have bought up everything that doesn’t have missing letters.  It lets post dofollow links to articles on the aforementioned sites with short descriptions, and users can vote on articles listed to bump up their popularity.  Your user profile page also allows three dofollow permalinks.

Give it a try!

(Oh, and a housekeeping item – IMAutomator has gone for-pay only, so I’ve removed it from my resources list.  Not saying it’s not useful, but I’m currently relying only on free promotional tools.)

I start a new job on Tuesday, so that load has been lifted off my shoulders, though I’m still facing the possibility of not having health insurance for a month or so and going without a paycheck for most of February.  But at least knowing I’ve got income again has decreased the stress levels a little, and I’m hoping to use the free time I have left to get some more writing and niche-site work done.

I started off by entering a couple of new articles at Infobarrel, both in hopes of grabbing the “Featured” spot on the March calendar for “Alternative medicine“.  Problem is, I thought these were important to write, but they will never, ever, make me any money, because they both rail against Alt-Med scams.  So next to a paragraph labeled “Homeopathy is fake!”, there will be ads for… homeopathy.

A great salesman, I am not.  I can’t push a product I don’t believe in, and I can’t be dishonest about the shortcomings even of one I do like.  So in terms of writing stuff that makes money, I’m definitely doing it wrong; but I’d rather be broke and proud of what I’ve written.

But I’m excited to report that, in spite of my own shortcomings when it comes to delivering quantity and marketability, I’ve started to see results!  Not huge results, but a couple of small Amazon sales commissions and a few Adense clicks.  In celebration, I forced myself to crank out two articles today in IB that are, in fact, at least somewhat keyword targeted and product oriented.  Meanwhile with help from two featured articles, my total views have passed 1000.  Not bad considering some if my work is about historical figures or popular scientists.

My first niche site looks to be turning into an “authority site” – rather than a few targeted pages, it will contain a large number of pages related to a broad keyword, with pages individually targeted toward narrower keyword combinations.  This seems to be the way to go as search engines give less and less weight to small, limited-content sites.