Variations in Aside Tags counts how many keyword variations appear inside the aside elements RankGear captured from a page, returning a whole-number occurrence count. It reflects supplementary side content rather than the main article, so a higher count is an observation about the terminology in your asides, not a target to inflate.
| Factor ID | RG-KWD-036 |
|---|---|
| Family | Keyword Usage & Density |
| Measurement | Variation occurrence count |
| Measured zone | Raw captured aside element contents |
What it measures
This factor counts keyword variations within recognized aside elements. An aside holds content that is tangentially related to the surrounding material — pull quotes, side notes, related-reading blocks — so this measurement describes how much of your target terminology and its variants show up in that supplementary zone specifically, separate from the page’s primary body.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear reads capture group two between paired aside tags in the script-free body, without an additional cleaning pass, then counts whole-word variations case-insensitively. In other words, it isolates the text sitting between an opening and closing aside and tallies matching variation terms as whole words, treating upper- and lower-case forms the same.
What RankGear looks for
<aside> ... supplementary content ... </aside>
pattern: (<aside[^>]*>)(.*?)(</aside>)
group 2 = measured contents
(counted as whole words, case-insensitive)How to optimize it
Use aside for genuinely supplementary information, and include related terminology only when it supports that material. Treat the resulting number as an observation about your side content, not a quota to hit — padding asides with variations to raise the count works against the element’s purpose and the reader’s experience.
Important considerations
- Nested markup remains in the measured capture — tags inside the
asideare not stripped before counting. - The factor measures element contents, not attributes, so terms in attribute values are not counted.
- Malformed or unusually large
asidetags may not parse, in which case their contents are not measured. - Supplemental content should remain useful, not keyword-driven.
- This is a prioritization signal that relates to position within a measured result set; it does not on its own cause or guarantee a ranking.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.