Informational keywords: How to find and use them for SEO success

By Somayeh Niya / June 10, 2024

Informational keywords: How to find and use them for SEO success

Somayeh Niya
June 10, 2024

In the past people read books, and magazines or met an expert to get more knowledge or solve a specific problem. But in the information era, the internet made it easy. We use informational keywords every day on the internet to increase our knowledge.

Informational keywords are the best way to leverage your content marketing campaign. It isn’t exaggerated if I say it is an inseparable part of every successful brand.

In this article, I will cover the below topics to discuss informational keywords in SEO.

• What are informational keywords?

• Why are informational keywords important?

• What is search intent?

• Examples of informational keywords

• Types of informational keywords

• How to find informational keywords?

• What tools can you use to find informational keywords?

• How to optimize your website by using informational keywords?

• Informational vs commercial keywords

• Informational vs transactional keywords

• Conclusion

I wrote articles about other types of keywords such as primary keyword, secondary keyword, and semantic keyword. If you like, you can read more.

What are informational keywords?

Informational keywords are search terms used by users to find information, research topics, or learn more about a certain subject.

These keywords focus on providing answers, explanations, or insights rather than promoting products or services.

Some examples of informational keywords include “how to,” “what is,” “benefits of,” and “guide to.”

So, people who use this type of keyword are in the initial stages of their research process. They try to understand a topic better or solve a problem

Why are informational keywords important?

When users search for informational keywords, they are typically in the research phase of their buyer’s journey.

This is an opportunity for businesses to provide valuable content that addresses their questions and establishes trust. So, it increases your authority when you provide outstanding content and solve a problem.

By consistently creating high-quality content around informational keywords, you can not only drive traffic to your site but also build relationships with your audience. Building a relationship with your audience can lead to more conversion.

Furthermore, these keywords play a crucial role in search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

Search engines like Google prioritize websites that offer relevant and informative content to users. Incorporating informational keywords naturally into your content can improve your website’s visibility and ranking in search results.

Before diving into informational keywords discussion, let’s take a look at search intent.

What is search intent?

Search intent is the purpose behind a user’s search query. It helps determine the type of content that would best serve their needs and expectations.

Before you choose any types of keywords, it’s crucial to know different kinds of search intent.

Because it helps you find the best content and marketing strategies that meet the needs of your target audience.

Below are four types of search intent:

Informational: Users seeking information or answers to their questions.

Informational intent keywords typically include terms like “how to,” “what is,” or “best ways to”, “tips” or “guide”.

These users are in the research phase and are looking for information to educate themselves or solve a problem.

Businesses can create blog posts, guides, or videos to target these keywords and establish themselves as authoritative sources in their industry.

Commercial: Users looking for products or services to meet their needs. They aren’t ready to buy and need to do more investigation to choose a product.

Users with commercial intent are closer to making a purchasing decision and are comparing different options. For example best SEO tools, Review Ahrefs, Semrush vs Ahrefs.

Transactional: Users ready to make a purchase or engage in a specific transaction. It means users made the decision before and want to buy.

Keywords that include phrases like “buy,” “price,” or “discount” often indicate transactional intent, suggesting that the user is ready to make a purchase.

Navigational: Navigational search intent refers to using a brand or website name. For example Nike shoes. It shows users just want to know about special brands and no need to shoes from other brands.

Examples of informational keywords

Here are some examples of informational keywords:

• How to start a blog?
• Guide to social media marketing
• What is search engine optimization?
• Top 10 travel destinations

These are examples of informational keywords. These keywords help to attract users who are in the research phase of their purchasing journey.

For instance, a blog post titled “How to start a blog” can target individuals interested in creating their own blog and provide them with valuable insights and guidance.

Types of informational keywords

Informational keywords can take various forms, depending on the user’s search intent. Some common types include:

How-to keywords

By using how-to keywords users seek step-by-step instructions or tutorials.

For example: How to make money online?

These types of informational keywords usually need a comprehensive guide about a specific topic. The broader informational keyword needs a more comprehensive guide.

How-to keywords often need to step-by-step process. Back to the above example, you need to write content that tells how to make money online step by step.

Users who use such informational keywords usually don’t have information about that query and the need for basic knowledge

Guide keywords

Users looking for comprehensive guides or manuals on a particular topic.

For example: Local Search Engine Optimization Guide

Guide keywords are similar to how-to keywords. They usually need a comprehensive guide. But they don’t need to write a step-by-step process.

Guide keywords may note the type the user needs. For example, a beginner or advanced guide.

Definition keywords

Definition keywords are used by users who are searching for the meaning or definition of a term or concept.

This keyword usually starts with ”What” or maybe uses a ”definition” or ”meaning” word along with the main keyword.

For example:
What is search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization meaning

List keywords

In this type of informational keyword users are interested in lists or compilations of information. Users search to find a list of specific topics.

For example:

List of irregular verbs
Python list programs and exercises

Question keywords

Many of the information keywords include a question word such as why, where who, and which. They are one of the common types of informational keywords because they are more conversational.

For example:

Why SEO is important?
Where is Jamaica?
Who is the richest person in the world?

How to find informational keywords?

Finding relevant informational keywords is crucial for optimizing your website. Here are some strategies to identify informational keywords:

Question keywords

Competitor analysis always works. You can check your competitors and use the informational keywords they are utilizing.

When you check your competitors, pay attention to their domain authority (DA). Choose the informational keywords of competitors that are close to yours.

Google suggestions

Google’s autocomplete gives an insight to explore information keywords. For example, your seed keyword is ”SEO tools”, and you want to write informational content around it.

Use one of the informational keywords (how to, guide, list, question word, etc) along with the main keyword.

For example, add ”which” to SEO tools. It gives you some suggestions.

These are some informational topics you can find around your main keywords.

Forums

Forums are the best place for finding informational topics because many of users sign up in these forums to get help.

Explore forums, Q&A websites, and social media platforms to identify common questions and topics of interest within your target audience

Surveys or polls

By directly engaging with your audience, you can gather valuable insights into the specific questions and topics they are interested in.

This first-hand information can help you tailor your content to address their needs and preferences.

Furthermore, conducting keyword research to identify trending informational queries can help your content to meet the current needs and interests of your target audience.

Which tools can you use to find informational keywords?

Several tools can help you find informational keywords for SEO optimization. Some of them are as below:

Semrush

Semrush’s Magic tool is one of the best tools to find informational keywords easily.

Type your main keyword in the Magic tool search bar. In the below tab go to the Intent section and select informational.

I typed ”search engine optimization” as the main keyword and selected informational intent.

As you see it suggests informational keywords.

AnswerThePublic

This tool generates keyword ideas in the form of questions that people are asking online. By targeting these questions, you can create content that directly addresses the information users are seeking.

Answerthepublic also gives data about CPC and search volume. It categorizes the result into different parts such as questions, comparisons, prepositions, and more.

How to optimize your website by using informational keywords?

Optimizing your website for informational keywords can significantly improve your SEO rankings. Here are some tips to make the most of informational keywords

Create high-quality content

Produce informative, well-researched content that answers the user’s query. If your final goal is selling a product, produce high-quality content and solve a problem.

It helps to increase your authority. People prefer to purchase from trustful and authoritative sources.

So, informational keywords directly affect your transactional or commercial keywords

Optimize on-page elements

Optimizing on-page informational keywords includes using keywords within web pages to gain the attention of users and search engines. Some important techniques include:

Include informational keywords in the heading, subheading, and URLs.
Ensure to use of keywords naturally in meta descriptions and title tags.
Ensuring that title tags and meta descriptions use keywords naturally.
Incorporate informational keywords in the image alt tag.

Optimize Off-page elements

Off-page keyword optimization has direct effects on search engine ranking. Key techniques include:

Use informational keywords in anchor texts when you link to other websites.
Ensuring that keywords are effectively integrated into your social media posts and content shared on various platforms.
Try to have a strong social media presence that aligns with your target informational keywords to drive traffic and increase your brand awareness.
Use a range of content marketing strategies including email marketing, social media posts, and ebooks while you are focusing on this type of keyword.

Link internally

Maybe it seems internal links aren’t important in comparison to backlinks. It’s completely a mistake to overestimate the importance of internal links. These links help your website structure. Relevant internal links within your content can improve navigation and signal the relevance of your content to search engines.

Informational vs commercial keywords

For example:
Best SERP tracking tools

These types of commercial articles introduce SERP tracking tools and buyers make a decision about which tool meets their needs. It at the same time adds to the user’s knowledge about SERP tracking tools. So, it’s both commercial and informational.

Informational vs transactional keywords

Informational keywords are research-oriented and aim to provide users with knowledge and insights. On the other hand, transactional keywords, show that the user is ready to engage in a specific transaction. This transactional action can be a purchase, signing up for a service, etc.

While transactional keywords are valuable for driving conversions, informational keywords lay the foundation for attracting and nurturing potential customers.

Conclusion

Using informational keywords is essential for SEO success. By understanding search intent, identifying relevant informational keywords, and optimizing your content accordingly, you can attract organic traffic, establish authority, and drive engagement.

Incorporate informational keywords strategically into your SEO strategy and unleash the potential for higher rankings and increased visibility.

Secondary Keywords: How to find & use them

By Somayeh Niya / May 12, 2024

Secondary keywords: How to find & use them

Somayeh Niya
May 12, 2024

When you want to write a blog post, choosing the right keyword is a concern. Main keyword is the primary keyword that you expand your content around. But how about secondary keywords? Many marketers overlook the power of secondary keywords.

In this article, I will explore the importance of secondary keyword in SEO and how to find and use them. First, let’s talk about what are secondary keywords in SEO.

What is a secondary keyword?

A secondary keyword is a term related to your main keyword. It’s a way to expand your content’s reach. Secondary keywords help you cover more topics that your audience cares about. They make your content more relevant and useful.

They can be close variations, synonyms of the main keyword, or related subtopics.

Why do you need secondary keywords for SEO?

There are two reasons:

They increase your chance to rank for more keywords.
They provide subtopics opportunities to optimize your content. It attracts more targeted traffic.

For example:

Primary keyword: oil-free moisturizers
Secondary keywords: oil-free cream, oil free facial moisturizer, what is an oil-free moisture, best oil-free moisturizers

Assume you write a blog post with the above primary keyword. Here secondary keywords are those subtopics and questions that your audience needs to know.

For example adding secondary keywords like ”what is an oil-free moisture”, ”best oil-free moisturizers” can help to add details to your content.

This allows you to reach a wider target audience.

Why are secondary keywords important in SEO?

Good content needs to provide necessary information for users. Using second keywords is a good strategy to achive this aim.

These types of keywords provide an opportunity to add more details to your content. They send a signal to search engines that your website is a good source for specific topics.

You need to use secondary keywords in your SEO basic strategies because:

Secondary keywords have lower competition.
They enhance user experience.
These keywords create comprehensive content.

Lower competition

Secondary keywords usually are subtopics or long tail keywords. It means they have lower competition than the primary keyword.

Therefore, it’s a good idea to use them.

Let’s say you write a blog post for ”bali vacation”. A secondary keyword can be ”What are vacation spots in bali?”. It is a subtopic that has lower competition than the primary keyword.

Increase user experiences

User experience is a factor in ranking on Google. It means users spend more time on your webpage.

Secondary keywords can increase the time users spend on your website. Because these keywords add more relevant content and answer questions that users need.

This relevant content can keep them engaged and encourage them to explore more pages on your site.

In the other word, it increases the dwell time and decreases the bounce rate. So, it sends positive signals to search engines and shows your website provides valuable information to visitors.

Create comprehensive content

Google likes full content. If you cover more subtopics, your audience gets more information.

On the other hand, it also helps you write long-form content. So, using secondary keyword is useful both for audience and search engines.

Prevent keyword stuffing

Yes. You are right. It has gone the time Google ranks a page just for it has many keywords. But you need it yet. Sometimes using the same keywords can damage to user experience.

Here, secondary keywords can help you.

You can use a synonym of the main keyword as a secondary keyword. It means instead of using the primary keyword, you can use its synonym and prevent keyword stuffing in your content.

How to find secondary keywords for SEO?

You understand secondary keyword is important. Now, let’s dive into how you can find them for your SEO strategy.

Understand user's search intent

For choosing effective secondary keywords, the first step is knowing the search intent behind the primary keyword.

You can’t use every secondary keyword in your content. Unless it has the same search intent as your primary keyword.

Otherwise, it will damage your SEO efforts.

For example, a query like ”how to choose the best running shoes” has an informational search intent.

You can’t consider a secondary keyword like ”cheap running shoes” for it, because it has commercial search intent.

Brainstorm the idea

The next step to finding secondary keywords is brainstorming different variations, synonyms, and subtopics.

For example, let’s say you want to write an article about ”Organic food recipes”.

First, think about synonyms of the main keyword:

• Chemical-free food recipes
• Natural food recipes
• Healthy food recipes
• Pure food recipes

These are close synonyms of the main keyword.

Next, think about close subtopics, and long-tail keyword variations of the main keyword.

• Organic dinner recipes
• Organic food recipes ideas
• Organic food recipes ideas on a budget
• Healthy food recipes for breakfast

You can add each of these secondary keywords and expand your content around it. But don’t forget:

As the name implies, a secondary keyword is just secondary. Don’t forget that the primary keyword is your main topic.
Secondary keywords with lower KD (keyword difficulty) are easier to rank.

Analyse your competitors secondary keywords

The third step is analyzing your competitors.

Analyze their blog post to find the keywords they are ranking for.

Why analyzing competitor’s secondary keyword is important?

Because it helps you find the gaps and opportunities that they may have missed. So, it helps you to become an outstanding resource for your audience.

Just don’t forget, competitor analysis is not about copying their keywords; Just it gives you insights to improve your own keyword strategy.

Put yourself in the customer's shoes

Like always the needs and expectations of your audience are important. Try to find secondary keywords that address their specific concerns and questions.

It helps you to create content that helps your audience and establishes your credibility.

For example, your primary keyword is ”women’s shorts”.

Ok, what are women’s needs and expectations for shorts?

They need to know about:

• Period shorts
• Women’s period underwear
• Menstrual sleep shorts

Remember, your secondary keywords should align with the intent of your target audience.

Search for their needs and address them. It attracts more qualified traffic and you will build a loyal customer base

Use SEO tools

The fourth step for finding secondary keywords is using keyword research tools.

These tools provide search volume, competition, and related keywords that you may not have considered.

Some keyword research tools include Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs.

After you enter your primary keywords in these keyword research tools, it gives you many keyword ideas.

Search for those keywords that are synonyms of the main keyword. Or the keywords that can provide subtopics.

Use Google auto suggestions

When you type your primary keyword in the Google search bar, it gives you other keyword options.

Usually, they are more specific than your primary keywords. If it aligns with the primary keyword, you can use them as subtopics. This subtopic will be your secondary keyword.

In addition, using Google auto suggestions as a way to find secondary keywords has an important benefit: It mostly suggests secondary keywords that their search intent will be the same as primary keywords.

This is an example of informational search intent. As you see other suggestions also have the same search intent.

In this example, the primary keyword has commercial search intent. It also is the same for many of the other suggestions.

Organize keywords effectively

In previous steps, you found the secondary keywords.

Now, you have a secondary keyword list. It’s the time to organize them effectively.

Your secondary keywords are a collection of synonyms of the main keyword or subtopics.

Group them into categories based on their relevance to different subtopics or sections of your page.

For subtopics create content with subheadings that include that secondary keyword. Inside the subtopic use your primary keyword too.

And, use synonyms instead of your primary keyword naturally. For example, if you need to use a primary keyword two times in a sentence, use a synonym instead.

This will make it easier for you to create targeted content and optimize your page for maximum visibility.

How to use secondary keywords in your content?

Now that you have an understanding of how to find secondary keywords, let’s use practical ways to include them in your content.

One effective way to include secondary keywords in your content is by using them in subheadings.

Subheadings break up your content and make it more readable for the audience.

It also provides an opportunity to naturally use additional keywords.

Another strategy is using secondary keywords in image alt text. Alt text is an important element for web accessibility and SEO purposes.

It describes the content of an image to search engine crawlers.

So, use more images in your content. It helps to have sufficient space to include secondary keywords in your image alt text.

Also, you can add secondary keywords in the body of your content. Just don’t forget you should use them naturally in content. Otherwise, it won’t be effective.

How to improve your published content by using secondary keywords?

If you already published content and you want to improve your ranking by using secondary keywords, Google search console helps you to do it.

Go to Google search console and log into your account.

Then, go to the Performance tab and filter it by impressions.

Here you can check which query has the highest impressions.

For example, in this report below keywords are in one group and they pulled impressions for a specific blog post.

• best serp tracking
• best serp tracker tool
• serp tracking tool
• best serp tracking tool
• best serp tracker
• serp monitoring tool
• serps tracking tool

If they aren’t your primary keywords, you can use them as secondary keywords and optimize related blog posts.

These keywords indicate your page shown on the search result page for this query. Using them as synonyms of the primary keyword can help to improve your SEO. Or use them as subtopics in your content.

By doing this strategy you have more chance for gaining clicks for these keywords.

Secondary keywords vs semantic keywords (LSI Keywords)

Secondary keywords and semantic keywords (LSI keywords) are often used interchangeably. But they aren’t the same. There are some key differences between them.

Secondary keywords are specific keyword phrases related to your primary keyword.

They provide details to optimize your content.

For example, secondary keywords for ”how to make sandwich” are:

• Easy recipe to make sandwich
• How to make a sandwich without bread

Semantic keywords, on the other hand, are terms and phrases that are closely related to your primary keyword in terms of context and meaning.

They help search engines understand the topic and relevance of your content.

For example, some semantic keywords for ” how to make sandwich” are:

• sandwich
• bread
• cheese
• making sandwiches
• recipes
• butter
• learn
• making
• condiments
• knife

A good SEO strategy needs both secondary keyword and semantic keyword. These keywords provide chances of ranking higher in search results.

Examples of secondary keywords

To show the effectiveness of secondary keywords, let’s look at some real-life examples from different industries.

Example 1: Fitness Industry

Primary keyword: losing weight naturally

Secondary keywords: Lose weight fast and safely, reduce weight, lose fat naturally, weight loss tips for beginners, effective workouts for weight loss, and nutrition tips for sustainable weight loss.

For instance, if you are a personal trainer in weight loss, you can create content that focuses on the above secondary keywords.

It helps to attract individuals who are looking for weight loss solutions. It helps to position yourself as an expert in this niche.

Example 2: Technology Industry

Primary keyword: How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Service?

Secondary keywords: Web hosting provider, Types of web hosting, Tip to find the best hosting services

These secondary keywords can create full content. This is the content that every user wants to see on your webpage.

FAQ

1-What are secondary keywords?

Secondary keywords are closely related to the primary keywords and add more details to the main content. They can be synonyms or close variations of the primary keywords

2-How many secondary keywords should I use?

You can use 3-4 secondary keywords for every primary keyword in a webpage.

3-Which is more important, primary or secondary keywords?

Primary keywords are the most important keywords. Every webpage must have a primary keyword. But secondary keyword isn’t a necessity but they help to SEO of a webpage.

What is the difference between secondary and LSI keywords?

LSI keywords are conceptually related to the primary keyword that helps search engines find what your page is about. But secondary keywords are synonyms or close variations of the primary keyword that add more details and context to the main content.

What is a secondary keyword example?

Primary keyword: Benefits of yoga for your body

Secondary keyword: Best Yoga tips

Primary Keywords: How to use them for SEO Success

By Somayeh Niya / April 4, 2024

Primary Keywords: How to use them for SEO success

Somayeh Niya
April 4, 2024

In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), primary keywords play a vital role in driving organic traffic to your website. Understanding the significance of primary keywords can significantly impact the success of your SEO efforts. Additionally, knowing different types of keyword, how to select the right primary keyword and implementing it strategically can maximize its impact.

In this article, I’m going to discuss definition of primary keywords, their importance, how to implement primary keywords in content, and more.

What is a primary keyword?

Primary keywords, also known as focus keywords, are the main keywords that accurately represent the content and purpose of a webpage. They are the terms that users are most likely to search for when looking for information or products related to your website.

Primary keywords usually include 1 or 2 words. They always have a high search volume and also competition.

For example: ‘digital marketing”, ” email marketing”, ”fitness”, and ”skincare” are primary keywords.

When selecting primary keywords, it’s crucial to conduct thorough research to identify the most effective ones for your website. Consider factors such as search volume, competition level, and relevance to your content.

Why Primary Keywords are important in SEO?

Primary keywords act as signposts to search engines, and guide them to understand what your webpage is about. When search engines crawl and index your website, they analyze the content and metadata to determine its relevancy to specific search queries.

By incorporating primary keywords naturally throughout your content, search engines can better understand the purpose and topic of your webpage.

Primary keywords are essential for attracting the right audience to your website. Users who search for specific keywords are more likely to be interested in the content or products you offer, and it will increase the chances of conversion and engagement on your site.

According to a survey conducted by Moz, 70% of marketers find keyword research importance for improving their website’s search engine visibility. This survey can prove the value of primary keywords in driving organic traffic to a webpage.

It’s important to note that primary keywords should be used in a strategic and natural manner within your content. Overloading your content with primary keywords can hurt your website’s search engine rankings.

Primary Keywords Vs. Secondary Keywords

While primary keywords are the main focus of your SEO efforts, secondary keywords also play a crucial role in optimizing your website. Primary keywords are the main terms that directly reflect the core topic of your content, while secondary keywords provide additional context and variations to enhance the overall relevance of your webpage.

For example, if your primary keyword is “organic skincare,” secondary keywords could include “natural skincare products,” “chemical-free skincare,” “Vegan-friendly skincare,” or “sustainable beauty routines.”

By using a mix of primary and secondary keywords strategically throughout your content, you create a more comprehensive representation of your webpage’s topic, and achieve a wider range of search queries and user intents.

Secondary keywords can also help to capture long-tail search queries, which are more specific and typically have higher conversion rates. By including a diverse set of secondary keywords related to your primary topic, you can attract a more targeted audience interested in various aspects of the overarching theme.

This not only improves your website’s visibility in search results but also enhances the user experience by offering valuable and relevant information on related topics.

Strategies for Effective Keyword Research

Choosing the right primary keyword is crucial for successful SEO. It requires a combination of effective keyword research strategies and the use of tools designed to identify primary keywords related to your content.

Search intent

When conducting keyword research, it’s essential to understand your target audience and their search intent. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential visitors and think about what they would likely type into a search engine to find your content. Brainstorming relevant keywords and phrases is an excellent starting point for finding potential primary keywords.

For example, if you have a website that offers cooking tips and recipes, think about the specific terms your audience might use, such as “quick and easy dinner recipes,” “healthy breakfast ideas,” or “vegetarian pasta dishes.”

SEO tools

Using SEO tools in your keyword research offers insights into search volume, competition, and related keywords. Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Moz Keyword Explorer are examples of useful tools for identifying primary keywords that have high search volume and are less competitive.

These tools can provide valuable data on how often certain keywords are searched for and how difficult it would be to rank for them. By analyzing this information, you can narrow down your options and choose primary keywords that have a good balance of search volume and competition.

Google's auto completions

In addition to keyword research tools, consider leveraging search engine autocomplete and suggestions. When you start typing a query into a search engine, you’ll notice that it provides suggested auto-completions based on popular searches related to your query.

For instance, if you type “healthy snacks” into a search engine, you might see suggestions like “healthy snacks for kids,” “healthy snacks for school,” or “healthy snacks for weight loss.” These auto-completions can give you insights into the primary keywords people are searching for about your topic.

Competitor analysis

Analyzing your competitors can provide valuable insights into the primary keywords they are targeting. SEO tools like Ahrefs and SpyFu allow you to see the keywords your competitors currently rank for, giving you a competitive advantage in choosing the right primary keyword.

When you find the primary keywords that your competitors are targeting, you can identify gaps in the market and find unique keyword opportunities that they may have overlooked.

Key Locations to Incorporate Primary Keywords

Include primary keywords in the following key locations:

Page Title: The title of your webpage or blog post should include the primary keyword to clearly indicate its topic.

Meta Description: Write an engaging meta description that incorporates the primary keyword to entice users to click through to your website.

Headings and Subheadings: Use headings and subheadings to break down your content and include primary keywords to provide context to both users and search engines.

URL: Whenever possible, incorporate the primary keyword into the URL structure of your webpage or blog post. This helps search engines understand the topic before even crawling the page.

Image Alt Tags: Include primary keywords in the image alt tags to help search engines understand the visual content.

Body Content: Naturally integrate primary keywords throughout the body of your content, and ensure it flows naturally and provides value to your readers.

How Primary Keywords Can Boost Your Content's Performance?

Now let’s talk about how they can specifically boost your content’s performance:

Enhance Relevance

By incorporating primary keywords in relevant headings and subheadings, you provide search engines with clear signals about the topic of your content. This helps search engines understand the context and relevance of your content.

Improve User Experience

When you optimize your website’s URL structure by including primary keywords, you not only make it easier for search engines to understand your content, but also for users to navigate your website. A well-structured URL with primary keywords can provide users with a clear idea of what to expect when they click on your link, leading to a better user experience.

Visual Appeal

By including primary keywords in the alt tags of your images, you not only make them more accessible to visually impaired users but also help search engines understand the visual content. This can contribute to improved SEO performance and better visibility in image search results.

Natural Flow

Integrating primary keywords naturally throughout the body of your content is key to providing value to your readers. By seamlessly incorporating these keywords, you create a cohesive and informative piece of content that appeals to search engines and resonates with your target audience. This can lead to higher engagement, longer time spent on your website, and increased chances of conversions.

Conclusion

By understanding how primary keywords can boost your content’s performance, you can optimize your website effectively and achieve better SEO results. Remember, it’s not just about incorporating keywords but doing so strategically and naturally to provide value to both search engines and your audience.

Semantic keywords: Definition, Examples & How to find them

By Somayeh Niya / March 20, 2024

Semantic keywords: Definition, Examples & How to find them

Somayeh Niya
March 20, 2024

SEO has become complicated in recent years. Old strategies like keyword stuffing not only don’t work but also lead to penalization. Google bots are smarter now. They know what users are searching for, even if they don’t type the exact keywords. You can take advantage of this feature to increase the keyword ranking.

In this article, I’m going to discuss semantic keywords and how you can boost your ranking with these semantic keyword research.

What are semantic keywords?

Semantic keywords, or Latent semantic indexing (LSI), are those words or terms that conceptually relate to the main keyword. So, they are not the primary keywords. They surrounded the main keywords naturally to help search engines find the webpage.

For example:

You want to write an article about ” Pregnancy care”. Your primary keyword can be short or long-tail keywords. The semantic keywords for this article are words such as prenatal tests, baby growth, healthy eating, prenatal care, ultrasound, maternity care, etc.

It means semantic keywords are phrases that come up when discussing your main topic.

So, can semantic keywords be synonyms of the main keyword?

No. Semantic keywords go beyond synonyms of the main keyword, or similar words or phrases. However, it’s a good idea to use synonyms of the main keyword because it prevents keyword stuffing in your content.

Does semantic keywords matter in SEO?

Definitely yes.

LSI keywords help search engine bots find your content better. In previous Google algorithms, Google focused on existing keyword-match in search engine results. After the Panda update, it changed the focus on topical relevancy. So, existing semantic keywords in a web page are signs of the relevancy of that page to the query.

For example:

When a user wants to know about ”how to cook squash”, the search engine knows this is an informational query about squash vegetables, not squash sport. Consequently, search engine bots search for semantically related keywords like oil, oven, bake, roast, cooking, and so on.

Not only for homonyms queries, also is the same for all types of queries. As soon as search engines know search intent, they search for semantic keywords in the pages. So, by including semantic keywords in your content help to boost your ranking.

Benefits of Using semantic keywords

Using semantic keywords has several benefits for SEO. You can’t improve the SEO of your page without using proper semantic keywords. Pay attention to the below advantages to know more about the importance of relevant keywords.

Improve organic traffic

When users type a query in search engines, always like to receive large information about it. This includes hidden aspects of that query.

For example:

If someone searches for a ”fast breakfast idea”, it means other aspects of the idea are essential for that person.

So, in addition to common semantic keywords like grab-and-go breakfast, recipes, eggs, or granola, you should add other relevant keywords like healthy breakfast, nutritious breakfast, and delicious breakfast.

Adding this hidden side of a query not only improves your organic traffic but also helps to outrank your competitors. Because these are relevant semantic keywords for search engines.

Decrease bounce rate

When you use relevant keywords in your content, you will reduce the danger of entering the wrong user into your webpage.

For example:

If you have an article about Windows Home Design, by using semantically related keywords like bedroom, kitchen, aluminum, and iron you will help Google to understand this page is about house design, not windows home design software. So, it reduces the bounce rate.

Increase sale

If you own a website for selling products using LSI keywords can increase your sales. Because semantic keywords help to create a better search experience for buyers.

Visibility on SERPs

If you pay attention to all the basics of SEO along with LSI keywords, it boosts your visibility on search engine results.

Pay attention to below image:

Diet is a related keyword for this query. In the first webpage, it appears on search engine results.

Limit Google penalties

By using semantic keywords you will reduce the danger of Google penalty due to keyword stuffing. There is a limitation for using the primary keyword in the content, but semantic keywords make up this limitation and boost the chance of finding your webpage on search engine results.

How to find semantic keywords?

semantically related keywords come naturally in your content when you write about a topic. But if you want to improve SEO, you need to extra ways to grab more relevant keywords. Otherwise, your chance will reduce if you don’t use sufficient semantic keywords.

Google Autocomplete

Like always Google search is the best tool to overcome SEO difficulties.
For example, I want to add semantic keywords to my current article. The main keyword is ”semantic keywords”:

In Google suggestions beside the main keyword, the bold words or phrases are related semantic keywords. You can use them in your content.

When you are using Google autocomplete for SEO, it’s better to use browser in incognito mode. Because your previous search and local search in your area don’t affect the results.

Google image tag suggestion

Every search on Google has a particular part for images. It includes images of every ranked page.

After typing your main keyword on Google, go to the images section.

You can see words like puppy, kibble and bowl beside images at the top of search results. These are semantic keywords.

Scroll to the right to see more semantically related keywords.

The image result page also has related searches too. Click on one of the images and in the right-hand panel the image will be loaded. Then scroll down to see related searches for that particular image.

You can do it for any particular image to see relevant keywords.

If you use this technique for every particular image, be careful that keywords relate to your topic.

SEO tools

Some SEO tools have specific features for finding LSI keywords.

Google Keyword Planner
Semrush
Serpstat
Ahrefs
Moz

In addition to a list of related keywords that people search the entire web for based on the topic, these SEO tools allow you to filter words by connection strength, search volume, and more.

Semantic keywords tool

LSI Graph is a dedicated tool that largely is focused on semantic keywords. Just enter your primary keyword. Once you’ve received a list of related keywords, you incorporate them into your content.

Google Related Searches

Related Searches is a great feature of Google to find semantic keywords. It appears at the bottom of the first page in search results.

In the above image, you notice bold words or phrases near the primary keyword. By using these secondary keywords you can improve your content for ranking. Add the bolded word to your LSI keywords list.

Analyze competitor websites

Look at the content on websites that rank well for your target keywords. This not only gives you an idea of what topics are relevant to your industry but also helps you identify the semantic keywords they are using. By exploring ways to incorporate similar keywords into your content, you can align your website with the same search intent that drives traffic to your competitors.

Leverage social media and online communities

Monitor discussions and conversations related to your topic on social media platforms and online communities. Pay attention to the words and phrases people use when discussing the subject, as these can serve as valuable semantic keywords. By understanding the language your target audience uses, you can tailor your content to resonate with them and improve your website’s visibility.

How to incorporate semantic keywords in content?

Semantic keywords can appear in every part of content naturally such as sub-headings and body of the content. You can use them in the first paragraph or as anchor text in the body of the content.

Internal links are another way to use semantic keywords. Not only help to structure your website, but also search engines understand the relationships between your different pages.

But some parts of your content are more significant because search bots first skim these parts: It includes:

Title tags
Meta description
Image or attachment file names
Header tags
Image alt tags
Captions under images

By naturally incorporating these relevant keywords throughout your content, you help Google’s algorithms understand the content of your page.

Conclusion

Semantically related keywords play important role in modern SEO. By incorporating them into your content, you can improve your website’s visibility, relevance, and overall user experience. So, next time you optimize your content, remember to think beyond exact keyword matches and embrace the power of semantic keywords.

How to choose the best anchor text? A comprehensive guide

By Somayeh Niya / September 10, 2023

How to choose the best anchor text? A comprehensive guide

Anchor text is a vague term at first glance, but at the same time, it triggers curiosity:
What’s the relation between anchor and SEO???

Searching on the internet becomes an inseparable part of daily life, and you constantly read content to get more information.
When you read through lines, you face hyperlinked words or phrases in different colors (maybe bold, or in different formats too). Clicking on them takes you to another page. These words are anchor text.

Anchor text is a word or phrase that presents new content by linking you to another page.
In the following article, I’ll provide a complete guide about anchor text. It includes definition, importance, types of anchor texts, how to choose the best anchor text and some additional tips.

What is Anchor text?

Anchor text is a clickable words or phrase in a hyperlink. It provides an opportunity to link your users to another page inside (or outside) your website.
In HTML code anchor text is the same as below:

But users see it the same as below:

If you want to see the HTML codes of any page, right-click the page. Then select view page source in the menu appears. Another page open in your browser. On the opened page the whole HTML codes will show.

Why is anchor text important for SEO?

If you want to find by users and search engines, don’t overlook the importance of anchor text. It provides context and relevance to both users and search engines.

When users click on an anchor text link, they expect to take to a page related to the text they clicked on. Similarly, search engines use anchor text to understand the content of the page linked to and its relevance to the search query.

Another reason anchor text is crucial for SEO is helping to distribute link equity throughout a website. Link equity or link juice is passing the value of one page to another through links. By using relevant and descriptive anchor text, you can help search engines understand the content of the page link to and pass link equity accordingly.

Types of Anchor text

Efforts to accept by Google’s algorithm caused experts to examine different types of anchor text. Some of these anchor texts are more useful, and others can be good to some extent. Let’s talk about it.

Exact Match Anchor Text

In this type of anchor text exactly use the keywords you want to rank. This strategy was widespread in past SEO.

Assume you have a website for chocolates. To rank it, you should use the same keywords in your anchor text. For example: the best milk chocolate brand. It is an exact match.

Although exact match anchor text is a very good choice, but it should be noted overusing it can cause penalization by Google.

Partial match Anchor Text

Since exact match anchor text can’t be use too much, partial match anchor text is a good choice. It is a combination of core keywords in addition to some extra words.

For example, “online digital Marketing Services” links to a page about digital Marketing. Partial match anchor text should contain one of the main keywords at least.

Partial anchor text provides more data for both users and search engines. Users know more about the page will link to, and search engines also understand it better. Actually using partial match anchor text is a good idea. It cause your content doesn’t seem spammy and penalizes due to overusing match anchor text.

Just pay attention! Don’t confuse users and search engines with long partial anchor text. If you use long partial anchor text, Google confuses about the content on the page you pointed at. So, Google gives up your content and doesn’t crawl it.

Generic Anchor Text

If you want to know the worst type of anchor text, I will say it is the Generic type.

This type of anchor text doesn’t make an information chain for search engine bots. Search engines don’t understand where this link will lead. So, logically save its crawling energy and give up such anchor text.

On the other side, a generic anchor text is like entering to unknown place for users. No one likes to click on ambiguous anchor text that isn’t clear where it ends up.

Naked Anchor Text

As the name implies, naked anchor text doesn’t have any contextual information. It just point to source and use a URL instead of meaningful words. For example:

Based on https://www.example.com remarks, people just use 10% of capacity of their mind.

According to Google’ John Muller remarks, search engines including Google don’t count this URL as anchor text. It’s just a normal link but doesn’t add to quality of content. Although sometimes we need to use a URL in content, but don’t use it if your main goal is getting traffic.

Latent Semantic Index Anchor Text

Latent semantic index or LSI refers to synonyms or conceptually related to the main keywords.
In the coffee maker case, there are other words related to the coffee maker and usually, these words constantly repeat in content. Google recognizes this relationship.
For example, if the page you are going to link users to is about ‘coffee maker,’ then LSI anchor text would be words such as Espresso, cup, coffee, kettle, coffee beans, and so on.

LSI anchor text is a good idea. It makes your content natural, and you will get rid of using some artificial anchor texts in your content.

Branded Anchor Text

Branded anchor text uses a brand name as anchor text. Usually, it’s an external link takes users to the brand’s page. By referring users to a high authority brand Google considers it as a good signal. It’s a sign of giving value to users. So, use high-quality brands in your content but don’t overuse a brand name.
Overusing a brand isn’t a good signal for Google and seems unhealthy.

Image Anchor Text

Image anchor text is clickable information about the image and it is visible for readers. If users click on image anchor text, they will lead to another page. In the other words, anchor text for an image makes it clickable.

On the other hand, always it recommend to use alt tag for images. Because Google can’t understand the visible appearance of images, and by using alt tag it becomes readable. But what’s the difference between alt tag and image anchor text for images?

Alt tag or alt text is an HTML attribute to provide more information about images for Google. It’s not visible to readers usually. But if the image fails to load, readers can see it. The difference between image alt tag and image anchor text is that the first one isn’t visible to readers, but the second one is visible and clickable.

In the below tweet John Muller was asked about the relevance of such links for SEO.

How to choose the best anchor text?

Answering this question is very simple: To choose the appropriate anchor text, straightly go to the main point in a concise and specific way.

Make it natural and don’t use words or phrases with complicated and sometimes irrelevant sentences! It’s better not to use complete sentences as anchor texts and optimize it SEO-friendly.

Below are some tips to select the best anchor texts:

Choose clear, concise, and descriptive anchors

An anchor is a visible text that appears as a hyperlink, and it should accurately reflect the content of the linked page.

Using vague or generic anchors such as “click here” or “read more” can be confusing for users and may not provide enough information about where the link leads. Instead, use specific words or phrases that accurately describe the content of the linked page.

Optimize anchors for users, not search engines

It’s important to keep in mind that you should be doing it for users and not just for search engines. While having relevant words in anchors can help with SEO, it’s equally important to make sure that the anchor text is clear and descriptive for users.

By using descriptive language, making links visually distinct, and avoiding misleading users, we can create a better user experience.

Don't use the same anchor text more than once

Using the same anchor text repeatedly can be seen as spammy by search engines and may result in penalties or lower rankings. When creating links, it’s important to use varied anchor texts that accurately reflect the content of the linked page.

To avoid using the same anchor text multiple times, consider using synonyms or related phrases instead. This not only helps with SEO but also provides a better user experience for visitors to your website.

Make sure about the right anchor text distribution

A good anchor distribution means using different types of anchor text in your post. Some people over-optimize their anchor texts by excessive use of one type of anchor, especially exact match. It is harmful to a good SEO. So to avoid it, utilize different types of anchors in a specific blog post.

Use brief anchors

Anchor text should be short and brief and not a complete sentence. Using a sentence as an anchor text makes it difficult for search engines to identify the relevance of the linked page. It can also appear cluttered and unprofessional.

Ensure to use relevant anchor text

Search engines become smarter and they find ways to find out how anchor texts are related to page content. If the search engine determines that the anchor text and the target page are well related, both the linking page and the target page will have a good chance for crawling and ranking.

Also, the relevance of the overall theme of the website is important. If a coffee shop’s website links to a similar website about how to make different types of coffee, it will be better in Google’s view than linking to irrelevant sites like sports sites!

Without relevancy, your anchor text will be unnatural. It will damage user experience and waste your efforts for ranking.

Heads up! Errors should be avoided in anchor texts

When it comes to writing anchor texts according to SEO standards, there are mistakes that should be avoided. These include:

Using generic phrases

Regarding the use of generic anchor text, a user asks a question from Google’s Lizzi Sassman:

Question: Is there any difference if an internal link is under the word “here” or if it is linked in a keyword?

Answer: It doesn’t matter if it’s an internal link to something on your site or if it’s an external link pointing to something else, “here” is still bad link text. It could be pointing to any page and it doesn’t tell us what the page is about. It’s much better to use words that are related to that topic so that users and search engines know what to expect from that link.”

Besides SEO discussion, generic anchor texts don’t create good space in your content. They are unpleasant and away from writing art.

Overusing exact match keywords

While it’s important to use keywords in your anchor text, overusing them can be seen as spammy by search engines. Instead, try to use variations of your target keyword or use related phrases that still convey the same meaning.

Including too many links

Including too many links in your content can make it look cluttered and overwhelming for users. Try to limit the number of links you include and focus on linking to high-quality sources that add value to your content.

Using irrelevant anchor text

Your anchor text should accurately describe the content of the page you’re linking to. Using irrelevant anchor text can confuse both search engines and users and may even hurt your rankings.

Using false and deceptive phrases

clickbait anchor text to draw users to click on links is not a good idea. You will lose the authenticity and value of your content.

By avoiding these common mistakes, you can create effective anchor texts that not only improve your SEO but also provide a better user experience for your audience.

Conclusion

Anchor text is an old but complex topic in SEO. Many active people in this field believe that anchor texts should be used according to the content of the page linked to it, but recommend that be cautious in using anchor texts as much as possible.

You should use different methods in link building. If you only use an anchor text model for your site, it is not out of mind that your site will be penalized by Google in the future, because Google’s algorithm is constantly changing the review criteria.

If users are not redirected to relevant pages by clicking on anchor texts, they will most likely stop clicking on other anchor texts created on your site and their trust in your site will be lost over time.

FAQs

What's anchor text?

Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink that directs users to another page or website. It is usually underlined or appears in a different color than the surrounding text. The purpose of anchor text is to provide context and information about the target page.

Why is anchor text essential for SEO?

Anchor text is like a road sign. It tells search engine bots and users where they will lead after clicking on it. Therefore it’s important to select them sensitively and intelligently.

Is there any difference between optimizing anchor text in internal links and external links?

Actually no. But anchor text in internal links is more sensitive. Because by using internal links we want to show our other pages to search engine bots and should be more sensitive about anchor text selection. In addition, internal links are fully under our control and we must be careful to don’t lose this opportunity with wrong anchor texts. But it doesn’t mean overlooking anchor text in external links.

What is very important in anchor text discussion?

The most important thing in anchor text study is knowing the context well.
Now you maybe say ok. But what does happen then?

All of us know the time has passed to select the exact match keyword as anchor text. So, you must focus on ISL or partial match anchor text. (Using branded anchor text in its right place is a good choice.) And ISL and partial match anchor text need a good understanding of your context.

Page Authority and Domain Authority in SEO: How to check and increase

By Somayeh Niya / September 10, 2023

Page Authority and Domain Authority in SEO: How to check and increase?

What is page authority?

In simple language, page authority is a ranking score for a specific page based on some metrics. The range of this score is from 1 to 100. The more it gets closer to 100, the page authority will increase, and the more it gets closer to 1, page authority will decrease.

It should be noted page authority isn’t a ranking factor by Google. This concept was developed by an SEO company tool, MOZ, to help for a better understanding of page value.

What is domain authority?

Domain authority is a metric that measures the strength and authority of a website. It was developed by Moz, a leading SEO software company, to help website owners understand how their sites rank in search engines. Like page authority, the score ranges from 1 to 100, and the higher scores indicate more authority.

Page authority (PA) vs. domain authority (DA)

While page authority indicated the authority of a single page in a specific website, domain authority pointed to the authority of the whole pages of a website.

In other words, domain authority = average authority of the whole pages of a domain. So, as much as you increase the authority of every single page on your website, indeed you increase the authority of your website.

Although they may seem similar, there are some differences between PA and DA that are worth noting:

First, PA takes into account factors such as the number and quality of inbound links, the content on the page, and the overall user experience. On the other hand, DA takes into account factors such as the age of the domain, the number and quality of inbound links to the entire site, and the overall reputation of the domain.

Second, both PA and DA are measured on a scale of 0-100, with higher scores indicating stronger pages. But it is much harder to achieve a high score in DA because it considers the entire domain rather than just one page.

Why page authority & domain authority are important in SEO?

Page Authority and domain authority don’t have any correlation to SEO; they aren’t official rankings given by Google and are not factored into the final scale of results. But they play critical roles in SEO. How do this?

MozBar accurately reflects Google’s algorithm by using the same data to determine the Page DA & PA. The ratings given by MozBar are valid and reflect the reality of Google’s algorithm.

Measuring the PA & DA allows you to determine if your page or your domain has been optimized for SEO. This allows you to identify areas that need improvement and those that are already performing well.

Additionally, having a high PA & DA can help you stay ahead of the competition, as competitors may not have invested as much time and effort into optimizing their pages.

This data provides valuable insight into your website. It also can help improve your SEO, even though it is not directly analyzed by Google.

How to check page authority and domain authority?

To check page or domain authority, use a tool such as Moz’s domain authority checker or Ahrefs’ site explorer. These tools provide a score from 0 to 100 that predicts how well it will rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).

To use these tools, simply enter the URL you want to check and click analyze. The tool will generate a report that includes the page or domain authority score, backlinks, and social media shares.

How to improve page authority and domain authority?

Page authority and domain authority are essential factors in determining the success of a website. It can be improved by following some simple steps.

Produce high quality content

There is no doubt a good and high-quality content is one of the most important SEO principles. Nothing can be replaced by good content in SEO. Because Google is so sensitive to the reputation of the company, and bad content hurt it.

Now, the question is how to improve the content to accept by Google.
A very short answer is: Good content should be comprehensive, accurate, useful, and make users satisfied.

In the following, I note some significant points that help to improve your content:

Write for users, not search engines

Good content should write for users, not search engines. It means seeing your content from the point of view of a user. Does it provide the proper answer? Is it comprehensive?

Write simple

Content must be exact and straight. Some writers think the complexity of content is a sign of skill and talent. But it is wrong. People give up complex content. For containing simplicity in the content you should pay attention to below points:

Use simple and short sentences.
Don’t use complex words.
Use short paragraphs.
Use many subhead lines that the user can skim.

Find your own point of view

Have your own point of view. It’s one of the things Google loves. When you have your perspective, Google recognizes this content should belong to a knowledgeable person. And also users come back to your blog again and again

Write once and edit twice

Editing content is an inseparable part of writing procedure. It includes checking for grammatical, punctuation, vocabulary, structure, tone, and more errors. It helps to enhance the overall quality of your content. Editing doesn’t conclude with just finding errors. It also takes care of how your content communicates with readers and coherency between different parts of your content.

Use statics

Include statics in your content if possible. When you write something according to your feeling and intuition, it doesn’t need any proof or evidence. But when you write about facts in any scope, include statics if it is possible. It helps your justification and thrust wordiness. Also, link your statics to high-authority sources.

Get valuable backlinks

People who are familiar with SEO, whether skillful or primary, all know backlinks are highly important. In simple language, backlinks are a sign of authority.

There is a widespread discussion in SEO for backlinks. Quality or quantity? Which one is important?

Actually, there is no exact answer to this question. Although backlinks are important, they aren’t the only main factors in SEO. A page or domain with lower numbers of backlink can have higher authority when it at the same time pay attention to the quality of backlinks and also other factors in SEO.

There are many proven ways for acquiring backlinks such as guest posts, asking the publishers for backlinks, paid backlinks, and more. But they are a short-term solution. Nothing more than writing evergreen content can’t bring organic backlinks to your website. Of course, it needs hardworking and consistency.

Some kinds of content like infographics, videos, and how-to Guides content attract people more. For example, if you write unique how-to guides that answer all questions of users, most probably many websites link their users to your website.

Build perfect internal links

For building internal links in a domain, SEO experts recommend linking from high-authority pages to other pages. Because it shares the authority, and low-quality pages get some portion.

Improve user experience

User experience plays a crucial role in improving page and domain authority. Creating a website that is easy to navigate and provides a great user experience will attract more visitors and keep them coming back.

Audit your website

Broken links are harmful to bounce rate and page authority. If it happens constantly and users confront errors, it causes the Google bot doesn’t crawl that page, and you lose the amount of traffic.
So, schedule a time to audit your site and remove broken links.

Why page authority and domain authority change

If you’ve noticed a sudden change in your PA or DA score, it could be due to a variety of reasons. For example, if you have recently added or removed links from your website, this could affect these scores. Additionally, if other websites have linked to your site, this could change your PA or DA score.

It’s important to note the scores are updated regularly, so even if you haven’t made any changes to your website, your score may still fluctuate over time. This is normal and shouldn’t cause alarm.

Conclusion

Page Authority and Domain Authority are crucial metrics for any website looking to establish a strong online presence. These metrics help search engines determine the relevance and authority of a website’s content, which in turn affects its ranking on search engine results pages.

To improve your website’s Page Authority and Domain Authority, it is important to focus on creating high-quality, relevant content that attracts backlinks from authoritative sources. Additionally, optimizing your website’s technical SEO elements such as site speed, mobile-friendliness, and URL structure can also positively impact these metrics.

How to improve crawl budget?

By Somayeh Niya / September 10, 2023

How to improve crawl budget?

Understanding the search engine’s mechanism isn’t simple. How Google and other search engines crawl pages is one of these matters. There is a long story behind how search engine bots crawl pages, and finding pages is neither by chance nor by an endless effort to write great content. To improve crawl budget, it requires a comprehensive approach that encompasses various aspects of website optimization.

In this article, I’ll talk about how to improve crawl budget. It includes definition, importance, and how to check and improve crawl budget.

What is crawl budget?

Crawl Budget is the total number of pages or URLs that search engine crawls in a given period.
Some factors affect on crawl budget. A page may crawl better, or another page may not.

As the word budget implies, Google doesn’t want to waste the budget and tries to save it. Google considers the budget for crawling a page based on:

Crawl Rate Limit: Factors such as crawl errors, website size, and limitations set on Google console limit crawling bots. These are crawl rate limits.
Crawl Demand: It’s the page authority and update of content that increases crawling demand.

It means if a page has a lower crawl rate limit (ideally it’s better don’t have a crawl rate limit) and higher crawl demand, Google allocates more crawl budget to it.

According to these factors, Google defines the crawl budget of a website. When this budget finishes for a website, Google goes after crawling other websites. Budget finished!

Why is crawl budget important in SEO?

According to SEO basics Google ranks a page in 3 steps: Crawling, indexing, and ranking.
Crawling as the first step in ranking has crucial importance. If a page has a limitation for crawling, it’ll lose the opportunity of ranking.

Google bots are advanced in crawling, and it seems many websites don’t face a big problem with crawling.

Crawl budget will be an issue when:

Website is large: It has been said Google has difficulty crawling large websites with more than 10k pages.

The website has unhealthy crawling: This reason is more common and happens because of internal linking structure, dead links, outdated content, and loading time.

Website is new: When a website is new, Google can’t understand whether it has value for the crawl budget or not. So, it isn’t an important problem and every new website faces it. So, high-quality content and link building can help to solve this problem.

How to check crawl activity?

Google search console is the best tool to calculate your website crawling status and optimize your crawling budget. By using this tool you know about the times your website crawled and the responses.

1- Log in to your Google search console account and go to Settings.
2- Navigate the Crawl Stats Report and click Open Report.
3- Here is a report about the crawling trends chart, host status details, and a crawl request breakdown on the summary page:

Total crawl requests

It is the total number of crawl requests your domain has gotten in the last 90 days.

Total download size

Every kind of download on your website, such as files and resources check by crawling bots.

Average response time

It is the average response time for all resources fetched from your site during the specified period. Lessing this time is better for your website and is a sign of good crawling speed.

That said, under 100ms is excellent, between 100ms~200ms is good, and 200ms~1 second is acceptable but should be improved. The above 1 second is too late and must work on the fundamentals of your website.

Crawl request breakdown

Crawl request breakdown provides an overview of the HTTP response codes that Google bot has faced during crawling your website. It consists of below categories:

By response:

This category shows errors Google has encountered during crawling. It is a good opportunity to fix these errors. When Google encounters these errors it means your users also experience the same errors.

These errors will affect on crawling budget and bounce rate. They are different error codes such as 404 Not Found, 500 Internal Server Error, 502 Bad Gateway 504 Gateway Timeout, and so on.

In the below report, 87% of crawling is ok, and the rest consists of some errors.

By file type:

This part of the report shows the percentage of the crawl budget on different files such as javascript, image video, HTML, video, and so on. Here you can determine how frequently and to what extent Google is requesting various files.

By purpose:

This part of the report shows the percentage of newly discovered and refreshed content. The discovery means those URLs didn’t crawl by Google before, and refresh refers to pages previously crawled and now recrawl again for the purpose of updating the information in Google’s search index.

Website owners often see a higher percentage of refreshed URLs than discovered URLs. Except when they launch a new site, migrate one site with another, upload a new sitemap, or add a lot of new content.

By Google bot Type:

Google bot is a web crawler used by Google to gather information. Google bots are of different types. Some of them are for desktop or mobile, and there are special types for images, videos, and so on.

A crawl stats report is a good opportunity to see how your your website is crawling from Google’s point of view. This report can help to solve some problems and optimize your website even if you don’t have technical skills.

How to improve crawl budget?

Crawling doesn’t mean ranking, and how much your website crawls better doesn’t mean your website ranks better as well. But it isn’t a good reason to postpone solving the crawling problems of your website.

The following, are some crawl budget optimization tips need to consider while you’re trying to enhance your crawling budget.

Improve internal links

Internal links are like a chain to connect different pages of your website. If internal links don’t work well or even if there is a shortage of internal links on your website, the crawling act doesn’t go well.

Fix broken links

Broken links are harmful because they inhibit Google from recognizing the structure of your website. They act like obstacles for crawling your pages.

Unnecessary redirects and broken links are killers of your crawling budget.
This links frustrate visitors, affect the navigation of your website, and damage the traffic. So, it’s an obligation to find and fix them.

Reduce page crawl depth

As said before, some factors determine how much-crawling budget a search engine defines for every website. Demand crawl and rate limit control crawling budget. So, now you should help to boost the crawling budget.

Reducing page depth is one of the factors which it can save the crawling budget for your website to some extent.

Page crawl depth is the distance between a specific page and the home page. In other words, page crawl depth tells the number of clicks you need to reach from the home page to another page. If a page needs just one click, that page is on level 2. If it needs two clicks, it’s on level 3. The home page is above all pages and always on level 1.

Keep fresh

Google loves being up-to-date because users also search for up-to-date content. It’s one of the factors that Google considers when allocating a crawl budget to a specific website.

You can create this freshness in various ways. The most noticeable way is creating new content. Also, you can update your old content; When you write fresh content, make sure to connect it with old articles through internal links.

Always stay updated in your industry and be careful about trends. If you become updated and create content for trends quickly, it’s easier to rank for content that’s not covered by thousands of competitors.

Try to create an editorial calendar for your website. It helps to create a content schedule for consistency and freshness. This calendar includes every type of update, from brainstorming ideas to creating new content and adding notes to old content.

Improve your site speed

Another way to increase your crawling budget is site speed optimization. If your website has high speed, crawling budget crawl them faster. So, they can crawl many pages in a specific period.

One of the important factors in site speed is hosting. Check your host constantly, and if there is a problem you can move to a better host.

Optimizing images is another way to improve site speed. There are plenty of tools, both free and premium, you can use to optimize image size. Just be noted always to use the right format for photos.

There are several image formats but all of them don’t supported by browsers. The most popular image formats are JPEG, GIF, and PNG.

The plugin can also affect your site speed. If you have some unnecessary plugins on your website, it’s time to remove them.

Update your site’s XML sitemap

Unavailable and redirect pages on your sitemap can be an obstacle to crawling your website. Google uses XML sitemap as a reference for crawling. So, every URL in your sitemap should have high quality. To check your sitemap you can use the Google search console.

Avoid duplicate content

Although there is no report of duplicate content penalty from Google, there are many reasons that show duplicate content hurts your SEO including crawling budget.

Duplicate content confuses Google as that which one of these identical pages should be ranked. So, Google prefers to save resources instead of wasting the crawl budget on duplicate content.

There are plenty of duplicate content checker tools. If your site is small you can check it manually. Anyway, while you are working on the crawling budget, take into your consideration fixing duplicate content.

Conclusion

Factors that affect on crawling budget are those always told in SEO. It means the crawling budget isn’t a separate part to check in isolation. When we talk about crawling budget it includes many factors such as internal links, broken links, site speed, etc.

If always you are careful about these factors, a crawl budget won’t be a problem. In other words, a good SEO on your website can guarantee your crawl budget in many ways.

But sometimes you need to examine it in the Google search console, especially when you think technical problems might take place hiddenly.

FAQs

What is crawl budget and why is it important for SEO?

Crawl budget refers to the number of pages on your website that search engine bots crawl within a given time. In other words, it’s the amount of resources that search engines allocate to your site for crawling.

The importance of the crawl budget lies in the fact that search engines have limited resources, and they need to prioritize which pages to crawl first. If your site has a large number of pages or if your site is slow to load, search engines may not be able to crawl all of your pages in a timely manner. This can result in some of your pages not being indexed or ranked as well as they could be.

How can I determine my website's current crawl budget?

To determine your website’s current crawl budget, you can use various tools such as Google Search Console or third-party crawlers like ahrefs.

How to improve my website's crawling budget?

To improve your crawling budget regularly check your site speed, broken links, 404 errors, thin content, low-quality pages, and duplicate content.

How long does it take to see improvements in crawl budget after implementing changes?

The size and complexity of your website can impact the time it takes to see improvements in the crawl budget. If your site is large and has many pages, it may take longer for search engines to recrawl all of your content.

How to fix broken links on website: A complete guide

By Somayeh Niya / September 10, 2023

How to fix broken links on your website: A complete guide

Users click on links in your blog posts to get more information. They don’t expect to face errors. These errors take place because the target page isn’t available or they have technical problems. The reason for broken links are various but the results are the same: Bad user experience & harmful for SEO.

In this article, I’m going to talk about what’s broken kinks, the reasons, and how to fix them.

What is a broken link?

A broken link (also called a dead link) is a hyperlink that leads visitors to another page in your domain or another website that no longer exists. The first case is an broken internal link and the second one is a broken external link. It always along with an error message such as 401, 301,410, and so on.

In other words:
Every link that doesn’t take visitors to the expected destination is a broken link.

Examples of Broken links:

Error 404 (page not found): This error means your target page isn’t available anymore.

Error 400 (bad request): It indicates the server can’t reach the target page due to an invalid demand. Here user needs to revise the request.

Error 410 (Gone): This type of error happens when a user tries to reach a resource that has been permanently deleted.

Error 500 (Internal Server Errors): It is the sign of an internal error or misconfiguration. So, the server can’t fulfill the request.

Why broken links are important?

Broken links are important because these links damage to SEO of your website in a variety of ways including crawlability, user experience, navigation, and structure. Broken links waste your crawl budget, increase your bounce rate due to bad user experience, diminish page authority and affect business opportunities because of losing the target page.

The broken backlink which comes to your website is losing opportunity. It prevents crawling your website and you can’t take advantage to receive the authority of referring domains.

Broken outgoing links from your website are harmful, and it creates a bad user experience.

These are good reasons to find these errors and solve problems as soon as possible.

What are the causes of broken links?

Every link may break due to a variety of reasons such as:

Typos in URL
URL modification
Website downtime
Moving downloadable sources
Changing domain names
Broken code
Removing the webpage

Some of these reasons are because of human errors and carelessness. Some of them are out of your control, and a periodic check can help you to fix them as soon as possible.

Below these common reasons of broken links are noted in detail:

Typo

Typo happens when you enter wrong URL. To prevent typing the wrong URL consider below points:

Check spelling
Don’t use space in the URL
Include “https://” or http:// at the beginning of URL
If you use hyphen or underline, pay attention to don’t use one of them instead of the other one.

URL Modification

Maybe you rename or make changes in your website’s URLs and forget to update these URLs after modification.
Old URLs work no longer after modification. Therefore you should use Redirect 301 and 302 instead of old URLs.

When you need to change your website URL, or even make significant adjustments to the content on your domain, redirects can help you maintain your PageRank and the reputation you have earned through backlinks and traffic. Consider below redirects while you are making change in URLs:

Redirect 301: It tells the search engine that the page has moved to a new location permanently and visitors see it in a new address.

Redirect 302: It tells the search engine that the page has moved to a new location temporarily.

For every permanent change in URL, you need to use a 301 redirect. It also passes SEO Rankpage and you can use the previous authority of the old URL. But 302 redirect doesn’t pass link authority.

Website downtime

Downtime happens when a website is unreachable, and it doesn’t load to perform the necessary function. It is inevitable for every website, but it can affect your SEO and reduce traffic. It causes any links point to your website failed and users can’t visit your website.

Downtime mostly happened due to:

Coding error
Hardware problems
DNS issue
Poor hosting
CMS issue

This technical problem appears in different level from broken links to disappearing entire of website. You need to fix it quickly. Any delay in fixing downtime problem=losing more traffic.

Moving downloadable source

Some links direct users to downloadable content like PDFs, eBooks, images, audio files, videos, and so on.
If these contents move or delete, the link will be broken.
So, check such content to make sure your links work well.

Changing domain name

Sometimes companies change the name of their brand and accordingly change the domain name. It may happen for small businesses too.
Changing the domain without applying the proper redirects causes all information could be gone and all the links to break.

Broken code

All codes such as javascript, CSS, HTML, and other codes can be broken.
Broken code leads to broken links.

Removing URL page

Maybe you delete the page linked to it accidentally or intentionally. It may happen for internal links. After deleting a page don’t forget to update the link.
For external links, it is out of control to know if the page has been removed. So, regular crawling audits of your website help to know it as soon as possible.

How to find broken links?

The first step to fixing broken links is finding them. It is possible to find them manually if your website is small. But I recommend using an automated tool. The advantage of a broken link checker tool is doing it flawlessly. Below you see some awesome broken link finder tools.

Google search console

Google search console is a must-have tool for every website. This tool has broad usage to check all aspects of your website, and finding broken links is one of them.

After logging in Google search console in the left-hand menu find Coverage. It gives you detailed information about the index status of your website and indicates pages have problem.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a well-known name in SEO service companies.
Ahrefs has a tool called Site Audit. You can find errors on your website with the Site Audit tool.

One of the good features of the Site Audit tool is reporting all types of broken links. It includes internal links, external links (from your website to other websites), and backlinks (links that come to your website from other websites).

Semrush

Semrush has everything you need for SEO. This platform has over 50 tools and reports to check all aspects of SEO.

It has a site audit tool that can analyze the crawling status of your website and specifically note each type of broken link.
When logged in to your Semrush account, under On-Page & Tech SEO go to
Site Audit section.

Enter the domain and select the number of pages to be crawled.
On your Site Audit report page, click on the Issues tab and look for Errors section.

In front of every error section, you can see the “Why and how to fix it” message which you can learn about the issue and how to fix it.

Sitechecker

Sitechcker is an easy use SEO audit tool. It scans your site and shows all broken links and the way for fixing them.

Like Google Search Console, the Sitechecker SEO dashboard gives you valuable data about your website. But the difference is that Sitechecker gives you the solution too.

How to fix a broken link?

Fixing broken links isn’t hard.
The way of repairing broken links is different for internal links, backlinks, and outgoing links from your website (external links). Keep reading to discuss each of them separately.

Fixing Broken Backlinks

Resolve broken backlinks with the below solutions:

Ask the website owner

Broken links that come to your website are out of your control to some extent. The easiest way is to contact a website owner who sends the link to your site. Ask them to fix this link.

Redirect broken link

Redirect broken backlink to another similar content to your website.

Use 404 error

If you don’t have many 404 errors on your website, you can keep it as 404 error. This is a good way if that backlink isn’t important. Otherwise, you need to fix it via above mentioned ways.

Fixing broken internal link

Consider the below solution depending on the types of your issue:

Use redirect

If the page that the link is pointing to has been moved, you can redirect the link to the new page. It will ensure that users go to the correct page, and it won’t damage your website’s SEO.

Update broken link

If there is a mistake in writing the URL, or if the link is pointing to the wrong page, update the link by directing it to the correct page. It also will help improve your website’s SEO.

Remove broken link

In some cases, it might be best to delete the broken link from your website. This is usually the case if the linked page has been deleted and is no longer available.

Fixing broken external link

To fix broken external link determine if it is worth fixing. If the link is important and relevant to my website’s content, then proceed with fixing it.

Find a replacement link and update the broken link on your website. This can be done by editing the page where the broken link was located and replacing it with the new link. After updating the broken link, test it to make sure that it is working properly.

How to prevent broken links?

As a website owner, prevent broken links seriously. Broken links can lead to a negative user experience and also harm your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). Here are some steps you take to prevent broken links:

Regularly check your website

You can use a link checker tool to scan the website for broken links on a regular basis. This helps you identify any broken links before they become a problem.

Update internal links

Whenever you make changes on your website’s structure or content, update any internal links that may have been affected. This ensures that all internal links remain functional.

Use permanent redirects

If you need to change the URL of a page, use a permanent redirect (301) to ensure that any incoming links continue to work. This prevents broken links due to URL changes.

Avoid linking to unreliable sources

Only link to reputable sources that are unlikely to disappear or change their URLs frequently. This reduces the risk of broken links caused by external sources.

Monitor external links

Regularly check external links to ensure that they are still working. If an external link is broken, either remove broken link or replace it with a working link.

By taking these steps, you are able to prevent broken links and maintain a positive user experience on your website.

Conclusion

Fixing broken links is an essential task for every website owner. It not only improves the user experience but also enhances the search engine optimization of the site.

By regularly checking and fixing broken links, you can ensure that your website visitors have a seamless browsing experience and are able to access all the relevant information they need. Moreover, it helps in building trust and credibility among the users, which ultimately leads to increased traffic and conversions.

So, I highly recommend incorporating regular link checks and fixes into your website maintenance routine. Remember, a well-maintained website is key to success in today’s digital world!

FAQs

What is a broken link?

A broken link is a hyperlink that no longer works or leads to a dead end. They are non-functional links that can negatively impact user experience and search engine rankings.

What's the reason for a broken link?

There are different reasons that cause broken links including removing the target page, changing URL structure, typos, errors in codes, and other technical issues.

How to find broken links?

By utilizing website crawler tools, manual checks, backlink analysis tools, and Google Search Console, you can effectively identify and fix any broken links on your website.

What are the different types of broken links?

There are 3 types of broken links: Broken internal links, Broken external links, and broken backlinks.

Does fixing broken links help SEO?

Fixing broken links improve SEO. Broken links are links that lead to pages that no longer exist or have been removed. These links can negatively impact user experience and search engine rankings. When a search engine crawls a website and finds broken links, it may assume that the website is not being maintained properly and therefore lower its ranking.

Informational keywords: How to find and use them for SEO success

What are informational keywords?

Why are informational keywords important?

What is search intent?

Examples of informational keywords

Types of informational keywords

How-to keywords

Guide keywords

Definition keywords

List keywords

Question keywords

How to find informational keywords?

Question keywords

Google suggestions

Forums

Surveys or polls

Which tools can you use to find informational keywords?

Semrush

People also asked

AnswerThePublic

How to optimize your website by using informational keywords?

Create high-quality content

Optimize on-page elements

Optimize Off-page elements

Link internally

Informational vs commercial keywords

Informational vs transactional keywords

Conclusion

Secondary keywords: How to find & use them

What is a secondary keyword?

Why are secondary keywords important in SEO?

Lower competition

Increase user experiences

Create comprehensive content

Prevent keyword stuffing

How to find secondary keywords for SEO?

Understand user's search intent

Brainstorm the idea

Analyse your competitors secondary keywords

Put yourself in the customer's shoes

Use SEO tools

Use Google auto suggestions

Organize keywords effectively

How to use secondary keywords in your content?

How to improve your published content by using secondary keywords?

Secondary keywords vs semantic keywords (LSI Keywords)

Examples of secondary keywords

FAQ

1-What are secondary keywords?

2-How many secondary keywords should I use?

3-Which is more important, primary or secondary keywords?

What is the difference between secondary and LSI keywords?

What is a secondary keyword example?

Primary Keywords: How to use them for SEO success

What is a primary keyword?

Why Primary Keywords are important in SEO?

Primary Keywords Vs. Secondary Keywords

Strategies for Effective Keyword Research

Search intent

SEO tools

Google's auto completions

Competitor analysis

Key Locations to Incorporate Primary Keywords

How Primary Keywords Can Boost Your Content's Performance?

Enhance Relevance

Improve User Experience

Visual Appeal

Natural Flow

Conclusion

Semantic keywords: Definition, Examples & How to find them

What are semantic keywords?

Does semantic keywords matter in SEO?

Benefits of Using semantic keywords

Improve organic traffic

Decrease bounce rate

Increase sale

Visibility on SERPs

Limit Google penalties

How to find semantic keywords?

Google Autocomplete