Question

All, can someone just give me a heads up on what ahrefs will give me in terms of actual words to put on my pages to help ensure my content contains what google wants to see for a given term i want to rank for?  

Answer 1

Use terms that include your main keyword as well as questions in sub headings to structure your content and get an idea what to cover in the first place. Also check which keywords the top ranking pages for your main keyword also rank for and use them where appropriate (sub headings or running text) if they have sufficient search volume. Then use Surfer or Website Auditor's TF-IDF module to optimize the running text.  

Comments

Constantin, thanks for this. You have hit the particular nail on the head I am trying to zero in on here. So with regards to "check which keywords the top ranking pages for your main keyword also rank for and use them where appropriate" Can I give an example? Lets say I want to rank for "albert einstein. " I find that THREE of the top ten ranking pages for "albert einstein" also rank highly for "light speed". Thus, I include "light speed" in my page. Which (in this case) would probably show on tf-idf reports anyway as a phrase to include, due to its relatively high usage across ranking documents. However, I get it that there will be phrases which do NOT become highlighted under tf-idf calculators as "widely common across ranking pages", but which competitor sites are ranking for. So tf-idf "outliers" of a VERY tenuous sort. So, I might also find that ONE of the top ranking pages for "albert einstein" also contains (and IMPORTANTLY, ranks highly for) the phrase "splitting the atom". This phrase (as an example) did NOT show on the tf-idf reports, as only one site of the top x contained it - thus ONLY using tf-idf reports to aid/create content would tend to cause me to leave "splitting the atom" off my own page. In other words. Are THESE words ("splitting the atom"), which pages ranking highly for "albert einstein" contain and also rank for, a MUST HAVE for my own page? If so, why do we think this is? I would REALLY appreciate your thoughts. Cheers.  

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@didynamous Yeah, that's why I usually use Ahrefs to find keywords to include in sub headings, while I use WDF*IDF to optimize the other parts of the content, as it doesn't have much to do with whether you actually rank for those terms. Taking your example (without actually having looked at this in Ahrefs), I'd include "light speed" an h2 because it's a keyword that competing pages also actually rank for. If one of the top competing pages also ranks for "splitting the atom", then I'd consider this a nugget and include this phrase in an h2 as well. If it's an outlier then you know you don't NEED to add this to rank for your main keyword, but you know you CAN rank for your main keyword as well as that additional term. And if you can you should I guess. :)

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@filbert21083 Ok - I think I have some work to do here as an experiment. I'm looking forward to this. :)

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SEMrush offers what you 're looking for in ahrefs btw

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@jointed Is it a ranking factor though? I seem to be running out of ideas for on-page. I do fairly well with all the stuff I incorporate, but just have this nagging feeling theres one more thing I can do to help.  

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This question "Are THESE words ("splitting the atom"), which pages ranking highly for "albert einstein" contain and also rank for, a MUST HAVE for my own page? If so, why do we think this is? " The answer to this is probably no. How would Google know that it's a vital part of information without an internal TF-IDF formula, or something along those lines for themselves. Google has a "related keywords" information panel on one of the search tabs that not many people are aware of, but how can it be a ranking factor if Google can't tell that it's useful information?  

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For on-page SEO, essentially include all the information the other top 3 pages are including, make sure it's all structured correctly, has an image that's optimised for the keyword, make it user friendly in terms of readability and giving the info the searcher is looking for and that's all there is to it really.  

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For a secret not many people know of, check this -  Those keywords are ones Google have dictated are relevant, talk about each of them in a paragraph and it's likely a ranking factor
https://gyazo.com/6e21c1e16700d1ea3...721a4

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@jointed I think we have a precise example of what is relevant there (somehow) - without the words in that list factoring highly in a tf-idf table. For example, "timeline" - I suspect not many pages have "timeline" with "albert einstein", yet there it is. "baby" - again, I suspect this has a fairly low co-occurrence within the corpus? I am speculating - but see where i'm coming from?  

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@didynamous the difference with this though is that it's coming from Google, who is saying these terms are relevant in their eyes rather than us speculating what is relevant that isn't in the tfidf

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@jointed One mo.  

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@jointed Yep. Which brings us back to saying that google "must" have a method to identify relevance of words to a search term which is not related to tf-idf. The "method" is effectively this "something along those lines for themselves. " So - what I was wondering - would ahrefs "words which this page also ranks for" be those words I am looking for. After all - by virtue of the fact that google has ranked the pages for "other words" - AND these other words are not heavily represented in a tf-idf table, they are also part of the mystical "method" we refer to?  

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(in my small data checking this morning - I am only really seeing plural, singular variations though in ahrefs - for terms which a page also ranks highly for - but its early days I suppose)

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I don't think so. If you have one page ranking for 2 terms, those terms may not even be interlinked or relevant to each other, there's a chance that it'd be matched but I don't think that'd pick up on 1/10th of those terms. I think the method they'll use, amongst others is search terms that people search right after each other. There's a chance it'll work in some cases but I don't personally believe it's a reliable way of finding the topics to write around

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@jointed Fair nuff. So when I read earlier someone saying "look at the keywords a page is also ranking highly for to get more ideas" (something along those lines) - thats not going to help?  

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@jointed My worry is that for me its quite an expense (ahrefs) so I need to derive from it - something I cant code myself for free anyway. I mean the competitor links looks good - but I was more concerned with on-page when I wrote the OP.  

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@didynamous You can use SEMRush if you're on a tight budget. Offers more tools at a lower price. And if you're on a really tight budget, you might be able to get a Serpstat lifetime deal in one of those lifetime deal groups where people buy, sell and trade their LTDs. That being said if you do have the budget, Ahrefs is the best option for this imo.  

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@filbert21083 I can go for ahrefs for a week trial - but I really need advice on what stats within it I can actually use in real actionable work against my site - which absolutely 100% will help me rank. Any tips appreciated lol.  

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@didynamous Well, as you already know you get pretty accurate data of which URLs are ranking for which keywords. Then the keyword data include clickstream data which no other keyword research tool offers. This tells you how many people actually click on results and what the average clicks per search are, etc. Sometimes you have keywords with plenty of SV but very few clicks on results because of a featured snippet or something. That's something you'd want to know. Plus the SV data itself is more accurate than that of competitors. The keyword gaps tool is super useful to find out which keywords competitors rank for that you don't cover. This is important to get your topical relevance to a level to compete with them. The link intersect tool is great to find common links that competitors have, because these are the ones you'll want to get first. Well and at last their vast backlink data are going to help you find which domains competitors have links from, build lists for link outreach, find out which domains competitors link out to to try getting an indirect competitor link, etc. I rely heavily on Ahrefs, because it's just the best tool at what it does. That being said, you can do most of these things with SEMRush as well - just that it won't find as many backlinks, has no clickstream data and less accurate search volumes in general.  

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@didynamous Use a group buy - also if you're only going to buy a single tool SEMRush is a lot more useful.