Part Of: Full Stack SEO Best Practices
Part Of: Tenured SEO
Published:
by Wayne Smith
Conceptually keyword proximity as a factor for ranking documents was initially pioneered by Altavista, however, Altavista's implementation of search did not scale with the size of the internet. Hotbot or Inktomi's internet search did and proximity has been a forever algorithm factor in determining relevancy ever since.
It is conceptually easy to understand and implement for evergreen SEO:
Or a sibling text element
If both keywords exist in the same in the same HTML text element, (or a sibling text element), they are near or close to each other. Proximity is almost a qualifier, not a factor; However, because relevancy is quantifiable and a factor ... proximity can be best called a co-factor for relevancy. However, there is also nuance in the implementation of the search engine side.
Altavista vs Hotbot/Inktomi implementation
Before Altavista implemented proximity as a feature of their search engine, searching for "apple, pie" could result in landing on a page that had apple as a type of dessert and a pie as a type of dessert, which was not very helpful. A search for, "apple ~ pie" or the keyword apple near the keyword pie was far more helpful; But, their core data structure was not designed with proximity in mind ... instead the results were filtered.
Of course the filtered proximity results for, "apple ~ pie" can be stored, not deleted, but the front end would not know when the core data changed.
Inktomi's implementation
Inktomi had the advantage of seeing where Altavista was struggling. "Apple Pie," can be treated as a keyword phrase made up of two words and its dedicated index as part of the core database which would be updated when the core database is updated. Removing the need to filter results and have the benefit of proximity for more relevant search results.
Inktomi added additional number crunching for keyword proximity: Looking at proximity and keyword density for each keyword a page can be selected that is about "apple pie" and not just has apple pie in the same element. Keyword proximity is part of the set of keyword density algorithms. It is not enough to just have an element with both keywords -- both words need to appear frequently in the document and at least once in the same element.
Inktomi's improvements in the algorithm made keyword proximity a forever algorithm for search and an evergreen SEO technique.
Google's implementation
Google benefited by seeing where Altavista was struggling and Inktomi's solution. But built their index based on sorting the internet based on page rank and then building their indexes from the query terms sorted in the natural order of page rank.
... WordPress is Good for SEO ...
WordPress typically follows the HTML coding rule of inline elements that go inside block elements and block elements do not break or go inside inline elements. Typically this is so that posts do not break or go outside the bounding box of the WordPress theme.
This is not keyword proximity:
A block element is between the text elements. WordPress backend is based on an editor which adds inline elements that are formatted by the theme.
Creative mixing of inline and blocks is not keyword proximity
By default, the width of a block is 100% of the size of the container. When margins and/or padding are also used a block element can break the theme.
Mixing block elements with inline elements is not invalid HTML. As a use case ... if one wanted to make a tabbed interactive element using just CSS ... they could create an HTML like:
The CSS can then display the block when the mouse is hovering over the li element. Additional CSS would style the tabs and windows that are displayed.
But the only text that could have keyword proximity is the words inside each block. There is no keyword proximity between the blocks; for good or bad.
... Headline tags ...
Headline tags even though they are not near each other, operate as if they are in terms of page structure.
The headline tags used on wikipedia pages, (the structure of wikipedia follows the rule of inline tags are contained in block elements), work like the headlines are siblings or sub-categories.
... Keyword Research ...
Having pages show up for several different search queries can double the number of people who see the page without doubling the work to create the page. There are numerous tools to find related keywords that can be included on the page.
The type of keyword research for proximity is not based on semantic meanings but keyword phrases based on the main keyword.
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