Free online concordance calculator: useful tool of basic semantic analysis and SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a popular web technique, primarily focused on:
• Increasing the efficiency of web content discovery;
• Improving web site traffic volume and quality.
As the online content is growing exponentially, the issue of web content discovery and its relevancy is becoming the utmost important for the Internet users and the developers as well.
Tagging is the web practice of annotating and categorizing the online content, similar to the indexing in traditional book publishing. Proper tagging is a centerpiece of SEO activity. In addition to its utmost value for the fully-automated data discovery and aggregation software tools (like search engine, webbot, web robot, web crawler, web spider, web indexer, data scavenger, etc.), they provide a valuable input directly to the Internet user, streamlining the manual information discovery and data mining operations.
Concordance (also referred as words frequency) numerically represents the words density in a selected text. Concordance matrix typically contains an ordered list of words with corresponding occurrences of each word in the selected text. Extended matrix also provides the list of sentences, where the particular word occurred.
Concordance calculators perform the basic semantic analysis of textual online content by calculating the concordance matrix and presenting it, typically, in a human-readable tabular form. Sophisticated online concordance calculator, available free of charge, could generate the concordance matrix on any arbitrary selected English text and provide additional sorting features, and sentence of occurrence list.
Tag cloud (also known as word cloud) is the graphical interpretation of the words contextual relevance, based on various criteria, such as: concordance, popularity, or potential profitability. In simple form it is implemented as a human-readable words list, where the font attributes (size/color) graphically represents the concordance numeric values. Tag cloud could be generated either on a single text item (article, blog) or set of items.
Example of practical semantic analysis of the poem “The arrow and the song” (written by the great American poet and educator of the XIX century Henry W. Longfellow) shows the original text of the poem and corresponding concordance matrix, produced by the free online concordance calculator (following):
The arrow and the song
by H. W. Longfellow
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Corresponding concordance matrix in tabular form is shown below*:
|
Word |
Density (frequency) |
|
afterward |
1 |
|
again |
1 |
|
air |
2 |
|
and |
3 |
|
arrow |
3 |
|
beginning |
1 |
|
breathed |
1 |
|
can |
1 |
|
could |
1 |
|
earth |
2 |
|
end |
1 |
|
fell |
2 |
|
flew |
1 |
|
flight |
2 |
|
follow |
2 |
|
for |
2 |
|
found |
2 |
|
friend |
1 |
|
from |
1 |
|
has |
1 |
|
heart |
1 |
|
i |
6 |
|
in |
3 |
|
into |
2 |
|
it |
5 |
|
its |
1 |
|
keen |
1 |
|
knew |
2 |
|
long |
2 |
|
not |
3 |
|
oak |
1 |
|
of |
2 |
|
shot |
1 |
|
sight |
2 |
|
so |
2 |
|
song |
4 |
|
still |
1 |
|
strong |
1 |
|
swiftly |
1 |
|
that |
1 |
|
to |
3 |
|
unbroke |
1 |
|
where |
2 |
|
who |
1 |
* Note: all words are shown in lower case, sorted alphabetically; articles “a, an, the” are excluded
Wrapping up this topic, it is relevant to mention that the free online concordance calculator implements multilingual functionality, covering most of European languages, though there could be some computation accuracy and performance degradation comparing to the semantic analysis of classic English texts.
References online
Free online concordance calculator: http://webinfocentral.com/RESOURCES/SemanticAnalyzer.aspx
Copyright © 2009 Alexander Bell
Comments
Thanks for sharing Alex — the Semantic Analyzer is a very useful tool for determining the viability of web content.
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