SEO
How Many SEO Keywords Should a Page Really Target?
Here’s what we recommend: pick just one primary keyword and enough secondary keywords to cover a given topic in full.
In the rest of the article, I’ll explain why and how.
Going forward, we’ll differentiate between two kinds of keywords.
The primary keyword, also called the target keyword, is the main topic of a page. It’s also the single keyword to optimize a page for.
Secondary keywords are any keywords closely related to the primary keyword that you’re targeting with your page.
Synonyms, subtopics, and long-tail keyword variations can be considered secondary keywords. But the best use of secondary keywords for SEO is as relevant subtopics—this is what I’ll focus on in this article.
So to sum up the difference, if the primary keyword is the topic of the book, you can use secondary keywords as subtopics.
There are at least three reasons why.
Reason 1. Any page needs one clearly defined topic
Sounds quite obvious, but a satisfactory explanation of this idea can become complicated quite quickly. It’s probably best if we look at this from a user experience perspective.
Since people look for specific things online, it won’t be the best idea to make them look for those things on pages about multiple things or even worse—everything. So a single page targeting multiple topics will not be that useful.
And since Google exists to help people find specific things, it will likely show a page with a specific focus, i.e., the most relevant one, rather than a page that tries to rank for multiple different topics simultaneously.
Reason 2. Google is good at catching close variations and misspellings
Have you noticed what happens when you misspell something in Google?
Google will correct you like a grammar teacher because you likely had something else in mind when typing that search term.
But what about close variations and synonyms?
Same thing. Google will rank your page for keywords with the same meaning and intent without you having to target every single variation intentionally. It knows that people search for the same thing in different ways.
To illustrate, let’s compare “submit website to search engines” and “website submission to search engines.” The SERP comparison in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer tells us these two keywords have almost the same results.
Reason 3. You can rank for hundreds of keywords if you optimize for one
According to our study, the average #1 ranking page will also rank in the top 10 for nearly 1,000 other relevant keywords.
This doesn’t apply only to keywords with large volumes. The pattern remains the same even for less popular keywords.
Case in point: Our article on seo basics was optimized for a single keyword with 1,400 monthly searches. The article now ranks for 463 keywords, out of which 156 are in the top 10.
Some of those keywords don’t sound like close variations at first:
- “seo basics”
- “how to use seo”
- “beginner’s guide to seo”
- “getting started with seo”
- “search engine optimization how to”
- “seo knowledge”
- “seo fundamentals”
Yet, in Google’s eyes, they can be “served” by the same or similar pages.
The best part here is that all of the keywords bring traffic independently. As a result, that article optimized for a keyword with a volume of 1,400 monthly searches in the U.S. generates an estimated 8,600 visits every month.
So while targeting not multiple but a single primary keyword is the best tactic, you will get the best results if you incorporate multiple secondary keywords.
In short, to cover a topic in full, you need relevant subtopics. And one of the best ways to find relevant subtopics is through secondary keywords.
Imagine that Google is a huge bookstore, and you walk in to get the best beginner’s guide to gardening. You’d surely appreciate it if the shop assistant showed you a guide that explained all the basics in layperson’s terms that other people seemed to be satisfied with. Why would you even look at other guides?
In an overly simplified analogy, that’s how Google works. The system understands what the searcher may be after and tries to serve the most helpful result while keeping other options in the back.
Let’s look at some practical ways to find both primary and secondary keywords at scale.
How to find primary keywords
Use these methods to find the main topic for your content.
Method 1. Use a keyword research tool
One of the best ways to find a good keyword to target is to use a keyword research tool. One that not only uncovers keyword ideas but also provides actionable SEO metrics.
Here’s how to find a good primary keyword with Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.
Let’s say you run a website with pet supplies, and you think dog toys may be a good topic for your visitors. You can:
- Enter your seed keyword (“dog toys”). You can also use multiple seed keywords.
- Go to the Matching terms report.
- Browse through Parent Topics on the left-hand side. When you find an interesting topic, click on it to see the keywords that fall under the same keyword group.
- Pick the keyword while weighing in Keyword Difficulty (KD), Traffic Potential (TP), and what makes the most sense for your website (you can learn more about choosing the right keywords in this guide).
Method 2. Find common topics in any niche
Use a content gap analysis tool like Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool to find topics often covered within a niche. It’s a helpful technique if you’re entering a niche you don’t know much about.
Here’s what to do:
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Open Content Gap tool
- Enter URLs of websites with similar content, and make sure the last input field is clear
- Hit Show keywords
You can also use filters to refine your list. For example, show only the most common keywords (Intersect filter) with a minimum volume of 100 and a maximum Keyword Difficulty (KD) of 20.
Method 3. Analyze keywords of your competitors
This method will show the keywords that your competitor ranks for (or any other site you wish to analyze). Based on that, you can pick keywords that could make a good fit for your website too. Here’s a rundown of the process using Site Explorer. You can:
- Enter your competitor’s website address.
- Go to the Organic keywords report.
- Refine the list of keywords to your heart’s content. For example, you may want to uncover keywords that include a particular word or phrase.
How to find secondary keywords
Use these methods to find relevant subtopics for your content.
Method 1. Find secondary keywords of the top-ranking pages
Once you uncover secondary keywords of the top-ranking content, you’ll have a good idea of the subtopics to include in your content.
Here’s how to find them with Keywords Explorer:
- Enter a topic you want to analyze, preferably a primary keyword you want to target
- Go to the Related terms report
- Set the toggles to Also rank for and Top 10
- Look at the results and pick keywords that sound like good subtopics for your page
Recommendation
Google tries to avoid ranking content that brings nothing new to the table.
So use competitor analysis wisely. Get an understanding of the kind of information necessary to meet searchers’ expectations but make sure to add something unique (your own research, a unique perspective, more up-to-date data, etc.).
Method 2: Find missing keywords with Content Gap
This last method should be used to boost your existing content. It allows you to find subtopics you may be missing by uncovering relevant keywords you don’t rank for.
We’ll use Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool again. But this time, we’ll insert a page in the last input to compare it with others.
For example, comparing pages about playing with dogs, we see that the authors of the compared page can consider adding a section about games to play with puppies.
If you want to target a keyword for SEO effectively, it’s essential to know how to use your primary and secondary keywords inside the content. Here’s a quick overview.
What’s most important is your primary keyword should determine the search intent, which is a fundamental aspect of search engine optimization. To get the search intent right, plug in your primary keyword into Google, look at the top-ranking pages, and identify:
- Dominating content type – Popular types: video, article, landing page, product page.
- Dominating content format – Popular formats: reviews, comparisons, listicles, how-to guides, and opinion-based articles.
- Relevant content angles – This refers to the unique selling point of the top-ranking pages. For instance, “best,” “free,” “in 5 minutes,” “for 2023,” etc.
Next, as already mentioned, you need to cover your chosen topic in full. A quick reminder here: Your primary keyword is the topic, while your subtopics can come from relevant secondary keywords.
But not all relevant subtopics will be uncovered by keyword research. It’s always a good idea to look at the structure of top-ranking pages to get an idea of what searchers may be looking for.
To make the job even easier, get our free SEO Toolbar and let it work out the structure for you.
While we’re at using keywords inside the content, let’s address a couple of “don’ts”:
- Don’t stuff your content with keywords – You don’t need to try to mention your keywords as much as possible or aim for some kind of keyword density or statistical importance score.
- Don’t try to “force in” synonyms and closely related keywords (aka LSI keywords) – Google won’t rank your content higher just because you’ve used more words than other pages to describe the same thing.
Finally, it’s a good idea to:
- Insert your target keyword into the title – Title tags help Google understand what the content is about.
- Align the H1 tag with the title – The easiest thing to do here is to make the H1 and title tags identical.
- Use secondary keywords in the H2–H6 headings – But only if it’s natural to the main body of the text. This can help Google understand what your page is about.
- Use the primary keyword in the URL – Not a requirement, just the easiest way to help Google and searchers understand the context of the page.
Those are the basics. If you’re interested in learning more, check out How to Do Keyword Optimization for SEO (3 Steps).
Final thoughts
Let’s recap the article in a handy list of dos and don’ts.
Got questions? Ping me on Twitter or Mastodon.
SEO
How Compression Can Be Used To Detect Low Quality Pages
The concept of Compressibility as a quality signal is not widely known, but SEOs should be aware of it. Search engines can use web page compressibility to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords, making it useful knowledge for SEO.
Although the following research paper demonstrates a successful use of on-page features for detecting spam, the deliberate lack of transparency by search engines makes it difficult to say with certainty if search engines are applying this or similar techniques.
What Is Compressibility?
In computing, compressibility refers to how much a file (data) can be reduced in size while retaining essential information, typically to maximize storage space or to allow more data to be transmitted over the Internet.
TL/DR Of Compression
Compression replaces repeated words and phrases with shorter references, reducing the file size by significant margins. Search engines typically compress indexed web pages to maximize storage space, reduce bandwidth, and improve retrieval speed, among other reasons.
This is a simplified explanation of how compression works:
- Identify Patterns:
A compression algorithm scans the text to find repeated words, patterns and phrases - Shorter Codes Take Up Less Space:
The codes and symbols use less storage space then the original words and phrases, which results in a smaller file size. - Shorter References Use Less Bits:
The “code” that essentially symbolizes the replaced words and phrases uses less data than the originals.
A bonus effect of using compression is that it can also be used to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords.
Research Paper About Detecting Spam
This research paper is significant because it was authored by distinguished computer scientists known for breakthroughs in AI, distributed computing, information retrieval, and other fields.
Marc Najork
One of the co-authors of the research paper is Marc Najork, a prominent research scientist who currently holds the title of Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. He’s a co-author of the papers for TW-BERT, has contributed research for increasing the accuracy of using implicit user feedback like clicks, and worked on creating improved AI-based information retrieval (DSI++: Updating Transformer Memory with New Documents), among many other major breakthroughs in information retrieval.
Dennis Fetterly
Another of the co-authors is Dennis Fetterly, currently a software engineer at Google. He is listed as a co-inventor in a patent for a ranking algorithm that uses links, and is known for his research in distributed computing and information retrieval.
Those are just two of the distinguished researchers listed as co-authors of the 2006 Microsoft research paper about identifying spam through on-page content features. Among the several on-page content features the research paper analyzes is compressibility, which they discovered can be used as a classifier for indicating that a web page is spammy.
Detecting Spam Web Pages Through Content Analysis
Although the research paper was authored in 2006, its findings remain relevant to today.
Then, as now, people attempted to rank hundreds or thousands of location-based web pages that were essentially duplicate content aside from city, region, or state names. Then, as now, SEOs often created web pages for search engines by excessively repeating keywords within titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal anchor text, and within the content to improve rankings.
Section 4.6 of the research paper explains:
“Some search engines give higher weight to pages containing the query keywords several times. For example, for a given query term, a page that contains it ten times may be higher ranked than a page that contains it only once. To take advantage of such engines, some spam pages replicate their content several times in an attempt to rank higher.”
The research paper explains that search engines compress web pages and use the compressed version to reference the original web page. They note that excessive amounts of redundant words results in a higher level of compressibility. So they set about testing if there’s a correlation between a high level of compressibility and spam.
They write:
“Our approach in this section to locating redundant content within a page is to compress the page; to save space and disk time, search engines often compress web pages after indexing them, but before adding them to a page cache.
…We measure the redundancy of web pages by the compression ratio, the size of the uncompressed page divided by the size of the compressed page. We used GZIP …to compress pages, a fast and effective compression algorithm.”
High Compressibility Correlates To Spam
The results of the research showed that web pages with at least a compression ratio of 4.0 tended to be low quality web pages, spam. However, the highest rates of compressibility became less consistent because there were fewer data points, making it harder to interpret.
Figure 9: Prevalence of spam relative to compressibility of page.
The researchers concluded:
“70% of all sampled pages with a compression ratio of at least 4.0 were judged to be spam.”
But they also discovered that using the compression ratio by itself still resulted in false positives, where non-spam pages were incorrectly identified as spam:
“The compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6 fared best, correctly identifying 660 (27.9%) of the spam pages in our collection, while misidentifying 2, 068 (12.0%) of all judged pages.
Using all of the aforementioned features, the classification accuracy after the ten-fold cross validation process is encouraging:
95.4% of our judged pages were classified correctly, while 4.6% were classified incorrectly.
More specifically, for the spam class 1, 940 out of the 2, 364 pages, were classified correctly. For the non-spam class, 14, 440 out of the 14,804 pages were classified correctly. Consequently, 788 pages were classified incorrectly.”
The next section describes an interesting discovery about how to increase the accuracy of using on-page signals for identifying spam.
Insight Into Quality Rankings
The research paper examined multiple on-page signals, including compressibility. They discovered that each individual signal (classifier) was able to find some spam but that relying on any one signal on its own resulted in flagging non-spam pages for spam, which are commonly referred to as false positive.
The researchers made an important discovery that everyone interested in SEO should know, which is that using multiple classifiers increased the accuracy of detecting spam and decreased the likelihood of false positives. Just as important, the compressibility signal only identifies one kind of spam but not the full range of spam.
The takeaway is that compressibility is a good way to identify one kind of spam but there are other kinds of spam that aren’t caught with this one signal. Other kinds of spam were not caught with the compressibility signal.
This is the part that every SEO and publisher should be aware of:
“In the previous section, we presented a number of heuristics for assaying spam web pages. That is, we measured several characteristics of web pages, and found ranges of those characteristics which correlated with a page being spam. Nevertheless, when used individually, no technique uncovers most of the spam in our data set without flagging many non-spam pages as spam.
For example, considering the compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6, one of our most promising methods, the average probability of spam for ratios of 4.2 and higher is 72%. But only about 1.5% of all pages fall in this range. This number is far below the 13.8% of spam pages that we identified in our data set.”
So, even though compressibility was one of the better signals for identifying spam, it still was unable to uncover the full range of spam within the dataset the researchers used to test the signals.
Combining Multiple Signals
The above results indicated that individual signals of low quality are less accurate. So they tested using multiple signals. What they discovered was that combining multiple on-page signals for detecting spam resulted in a better accuracy rate with less pages misclassified as spam.
The researchers explained that they tested the use of multiple signals:
“One way of combining our heuristic methods is to view the spam detection problem as a classification problem. In this case, we want to create a classification model (or classifier) which, given a web page, will use the page’s features jointly in order to (correctly, we hope) classify it in one of two classes: spam and non-spam.”
These are their conclusions about using multiple signals:
“We have studied various aspects of content-based spam on the web using a real-world data set from the MSNSearch crawler. We have presented a number of heuristic methods for detecting content based spam. Some of our spam detection methods are more effective than others, however when used in isolation our methods may not identify all of the spam pages. For this reason, we combined our spam-detection methods to create a highly accurate C4.5 classifier. Our classifier can correctly identify 86.2% of all spam pages, while flagging very few legitimate pages as spam.”
Key Insight:
Misidentifying “very few legitimate pages as spam” was a significant breakthrough. The important insight that everyone involved with SEO should take away from this is that one signal by itself can result in false positives. Using multiple signals increases the accuracy.
What this means is that SEO tests of isolated ranking or quality signals will not yield reliable results that can be trusted for making strategy or business decisions.
Takeaways
We don’t know for certain if compressibility is used at the search engines but it’s an easy to use signal that combined with others could be used to catch simple kinds of spam like thousands of city name doorway pages with similar content. Yet even if the search engines don’t use this signal, it does show how easy it is to catch that kind of search engine manipulation and that it’s something search engines are well able to handle today.
Here are the key points of this article to keep in mind:
- Doorway pages with duplicate content is easy to catch because they compress at a higher ratio than normal web pages.
- Groups of web pages with a compression ratio above 4.0 were predominantly spam.
- Negative quality signals used by themselves to catch spam can lead to false positives.
- In this particular test, they discovered that on-page negative quality signals only catch specific types of spam.
- When used alone, the compressibility signal only catches redundancy-type spam, fails to detect other forms of spam, and leads to false positives.
- Combing quality signals improves spam detection accuracy and reduces false positives.
- Search engines today have a higher accuracy of spam detection with the use of AI like Spam Brain.
Read the research paper, which is linked from the Google Scholar page of Marc Najork:
Detecting spam web pages through content analysis
Featured Image by Shutterstock/pathdoc
SEO
New Google Trends SEO Documentation
Google Search Central published new documentation on Google Trends, explaining how to use it for search marketing. This guide serves as an easy to understand introduction for newcomers and a helpful refresher for experienced search marketers and publishers.
The new guide has six sections:
- About Google Trends
- Tutorial on monitoring trends
- How to do keyword research with the tool
- How to prioritize content with Trends data
- How to use Google Trends for competitor research
- How to use Google Trends for analyzing brand awareness and sentiment
The section about monitoring trends advises there are two kinds of rising trends, general and specific trends, which can be useful for developing content to publish on a site.
Using the Explore tool, you can leave the search box empty and view the current rising trends worldwide or use a drop down menu to focus on trends in a specific country. Users can further filter rising trends by time periods, categories and the type of search. The results show rising trends by topic and by keywords.
To search for specific trends users just need to enter the specific queries and then filter them by country, time, categories and type of search.
The section called Content Calendar describes how to use Google Trends to understand which content topics to prioritize.
Google explains:
“Google Trends can be helpful not only to get ideas on what to write, but also to prioritize when to publish it. To help you better prioritize which topics to focus on, try to find seasonal trends in the data. With that information, you can plan ahead to have high quality content available on your site a little before people are searching for it, so that when they do, your content is ready for them.”
Read the new Google Trends documentation:
Get started with Google Trends
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Luis Molinero
SEO
All the best things about Ahrefs Evolve 2024
Hey all, I’m Rebekah and I am your Chosen One to “do a blog post for Ahrefs Evolve 2024”.
What does that entail exactly? I don’t know. In fact, Sam Oh asked me yesterday what the title of this post would be. “Is it like…Ahrefs Evolve 2024: Recap of day 1 and day 2…?”
Even as I nodded, I couldn’t get over how absolutely boring that sounded. So I’m going to do THIS instead: a curation of all the best things YOU loved about Ahrefs’ first conference, lifted directly from X.
Let’s go!
OUR HUGE SCREEN
The largest presentation screen I’ve ever seen! #ahrefsevolve pic.twitter.com/oboiMFW1TN
— Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) October 24, 2024
This is the biggest presentation screen I ever seen in my life. It’s like iMax for SEO presentations. #ahrefsevolve pic.twitter.com/sAfZ1rtePx
— Suganthan Mohanadasan (@Suganthanmn) October 24, 2024
CONFERENCE VENUE ITSELF
It was recently named the best new skyscraper in the world, by the way.
The Ahrefs conference venue feels like being in inception. #AhrefsEvolve pic.twitter.com/18Yjai1Cej
— Suganthan Mohanadasan (@Suganthanmn) October 24, 2024
I’m in Singapore for @ahrefs Evolve this week. Keen to connect with people doing interesting work on the future of search / AI #ahrefsevolve pic.twitter.com/s00UkIbxpf
— Alex Denning (@AlexDenning) October 23, 2024
OUR AMAZING SPEAKER LINEUP – SUPER INFORMATIVE, USEFUL TALKS!
A super insightful explanation of how Google Search Ranking works #ahrefsevolve pic.twitter.com/Cd1VSET2Aj
— Amanda Walls (@amandajwalls) October 24, 2024
“would I even do this if Google didn’t exist?” – what a great question to assess if you actually have the right focus when creating content amazing presentation from @amandaecking at #AhrefsEvolve pic.twitter.com/a6OKbKxwiS
— Aleyda Solis ️ (@aleyda) October 24, 2024
Attending @CyrusShepard ‘s talk on WTF is Helpful Content in Google’s algorithm at #AhrefsEvolve
“Focus on people first content”
Super relevant for content creators who want to stay ahead of the ever evolving Google search curve! #SEOTalk #SEO pic.twitter.com/KRTL13SB0g
This is the first time I am listening to @aleyda and it is really amazing. Lot of insights and actionable information.
Thank you #aleyda for power packed presentation.#AhrefsEvolve @ahrefs #seo pic.twitter.com/Xe3A9MGfrr
— Jignesh Gohel (@jigneshgohel) October 25, 2024
— Parth Suba (@parthsuba77) October 24, 2024
@thinking_slows thoughts on AI content – “it’s very good if you want to be average”.
We can do a lot better and Ryan explains how. Love it @ahrefs #AhrefsEvolve pic.twitter.com/qFqWs6QBH5
— Andy Chadwick (@digitalquokka) October 24, 2024
A super insightful explanation of how Google Search Ranking works #ahrefsevolve pic.twitter.com/Cd1VSET2Aj
— Amanda Walls (@amandajwalls) October 24, 2024
This is the first time I am listening to @aleyda and it is really amazing. Lot of insights and actionable information.
Thank you #aleyda for power packed presentation.#AhrefsEvolve @ahrefs #seo pic.twitter.com/Xe3A9MGfrr
— Jignesh Gohel (@jigneshgohel) October 25, 2024
GREAT MUSIC
First time I’ve ever Shazam’d a track during SEO conference ambience…. and the track wasn’t even Shazamable! #AhrefsEvolve @ahrefs pic.twitter.com/ZDzJOZMILt
— Lily Ray (@lilyraynyc) October 24, 2024
AMAZING GOODIES
Ahrefs Evolveきました！@ahrefs @AhrefsJP #AhrefsEvolve pic.twitter.com/33EiejQPdX
— さくらぎ (@sakuragi_ksy) October 24, 2024
Aside from the very interesting topics, what makes this conference even cooler are the ton of awesome freebies
Kudos for making all of these happen for #AhrefsEvolve @ahrefs team pic.twitter.com/DGzk5FSTN8
— Krista Melgarejo (@kimelgarejo) October 24, 2024
Content Goblin and SEO alligator party stickers are definitely going on my laptop. @ahrefs #ahrefsevolve pic.twitter.com/QBsBuY5Yix
— Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) October 24, 2024
This is one of the best swag bags I’ve received at any conference!
Either @ahrefs actually cares or the other conference swag bags aren’t up to par w Ahrefs!#AhrefsEvolve pic.twitter.com/Yc9e6wZPHn— Moses Sanchez (@SanchezMoses) October 25, 2024
SELFIE BATTLE
Some background: Tim and Sam have a challenge going on to see who can take the most number of selfies with all of you. Last I heard, Sam was winning – but there is room for a comeback yet!
Got the rare selfie with both @timsoulo and @samsgoh #AhrefsEvolve
— Bernard Huang (@bernardjhuang) October 24, 2024
THAT BELL
Everybody’s just waiting for this one.
@timsoulo @ahrefs #AhrefsEvolve pic.twitter.com/6ypWaTGDDP
— Jinbo Liang (@JinboLiang) October 24, 2024
STICKER WALL
Viva la vida, viva Seo!
Awante Argentina loco!#AhrefsEvolve pic.twitter.com/sfhbI2kWSH
— Gaston Riera. (@GastonRiera) October 24, 2024
AND, OF COURSE…ALL OF YOU!
#AhrefsEvolve let’s goooooooooooo!!! pic.twitter.com/THtdvdtUyB
— Tim Soulo (@timsoulo) October 24, 2024
–
There’s a TON more content on LinkedIn – click here – but I have limited time to get this post up and can’t quite figure out how to embed LinkedIn posts so…let’s stop here for now. I’ll keep updating as we go along!
You must be logged in to post a comment Login