Table of Contents
How important is TF-IDF for SEO?
How to use the TF-IDF strategy effectively?
The best tool for TF-IDF analysis
How important is TF-IDF for SEO?
For the average person, TF-IDF serves to help marketers determine the overarching topics for ranking in SERPs.
“TF-IDF” may seem very impressive at first sight or when you learn its full name. But if you try to separate each word, learn it one by one, and see how it connects, you will find that TF-IDF is not as difficult as you think.
TF: Term Frequency
This one is simple: Term Frequency is the number of times a word or phrase appears in a piece of content. Often, marketers try to follow an SEO practice of keyword stuffing their content. For example, let's say you want to write an article on "weight loss". The keyword "how to lose weight" appears 4 times in the article. "4 times" is the Term Frequency.
But Term Frequency or keyword density is not the only factor that will help SEO success. Because SEO success will use TF to divide by the total number of words to get the most suitable density to put the main keyword in the article. We call it Keyword Density.
For example, if the article has 300 words in total and the main keyword “how to lose weight” appears 4 times, the keyword density should be around 1.33%. Or if the article has 3000 words in total, the keyword density would be 0.13%. Keywords should be as prominent as possible in the content, even if there are other words with the same frequency.
IDF: Inverse Document Frequency
Simply put, it is the inverse frequency in content. Whenever a keyword has a lower Inverse Document Frequency, the value of unnecessary words and specific words increases.
If you use the most popular words on that page, you will be able to get to the top. Just remember to avoid redundant words like will, that, which, which, for, and or, etc. These words do not help in ranking.
By reducing the value of unnecessary words and giving more value to the main keywords, IDF shows that we should focus on the keywords that have the most weight.
Coming back to the keyword “how to lose weight,” writers might lawyer database include words like “exercise,” “diet,” and “diet,” as these are useful phrases that are relevant to the main keyword and topic of the article.
How to use the TF-IDF strategy effectively?
By now, many of you probably already know how to use TF-IDF. Now, let’s take it a step further and try to apply it to SEO to get on the first page. There are many ways that you can apply TF-IDF to your writing and publishing. The main ways to use TF-IDF are as follows:
1. Explore new ideas for content creation.
Some people want to break out of the mold and find new avenues for creating better content. They use TF-IDF to analyze their own and their competitors’ websites to find new approaches they haven’t tried before.
The health and fitness blogs we mentioned earlier might use keywords from the TF-IDF analysis to create new articles related to “how to lose weight” that they might not have done before, such as:
How to diet and get real results in 1 month
Diet recipes that anyone can make
Easy exercises for people who don't have time to go to the gym
Once they have a fresh topic, they can link back to the “How to Lose Weight” page and turn it into a simple core piece of content into a front-page information hub. This way, marketers can develop their entire promotional plan around this high-ranking blog post, which alone can greatly increase their chances of success.
2. Improve existing content with new and better information.
TF-IDF can also help you improve content that is already ranking well. Take a look at the pages that are generating traffic to your site and check if they are being optimized. Is there content that needs to be added? Are there quality links missing? Or does anything else need to be updated?
Use TF-IDF to find topics and ideas that are useful to readers. You may need to add links or create sources to keep visitors on your site for a long time, or create additional buttons.
If you want to rank better, good content is the answer. The more you do, the better it will be because quality content is very pleasing to SERPs. So you may need to consider creating more good content and improving your existing pages. Now, the top spots can be yours.
Related articles: How to write SEO-friendly content that will be a hit
3. Create Internal and External Links Skillfully
When talking about TF-IDF, we must think of content, right?? But TF-IDF also helps with link building strategies. Because TF-IDF can provide sources or references to visitors. Not only that, it also helps the SEO process to be more effective.
It may be possible to specify a topic that does not necessarily cover the main content of the referenced website. It may be mentioned, cited, and then linked to the destination website.
Let me use the same example. A health website might have an article that talks about dieting. Instead of writing about the entire recipe, you could include a link from the page “Diet Recipes That Anyone Can Make.” Including this link will help create relevance within the website and also avoid Keyword Cannibalization. Visitors will stay on your web page longer, and it won’t drop in rank. It will also create connections and provide benefits to readers. That’s a multiplier of benefits!
The best tool for TF-IDF analysis
There are many tools available to help you analyze your pages and create content strategies right away, without having to set keywords yourself. Let’s check out some of the interesting ones…as follows:
Link-Assist.com: Using TF-IDF analysis to perform SEO Audit
SEObility: Has a free TF-IDF tool that helps in testing page improvements.
TF-IDF tool: Helps improve the content on the page.
