Variations in Main Tags counts how many keyword variations appear inside a page’s <main> landmark. It returns an occurrence count of case-insensitive whole-word matches taken from the raw captured main contents — a signal about where your primary topic lives, not a target to inflate.
| Factor ID | RG-KWD-068 |
|---|---|
| Family | Keyword Usage & Density |
| Measurement | Variation occurrence count |
| Measured zone | Raw captured main contents |
What it measures
This factor counts keyword variations within recognized <main> elements. The main landmark is meant to hold the page’s unique, primary content, so measuring variation coverage here isolates how thoroughly the core topic is expressed in the part of the page that matters most — separate from headers, navigation, sidebars, and footers.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear extracts capture group two between paired main tags without an extra cleaning pass, then counts case-insensitive whole-word variations within that captured text. Because there is no cleaning step, whatever markup sits between the opening and closing main tags remains part of the measured content.
What RankGear looks for
<main>
<!-- capture group two: everything between the paired main tags -->
<h1>…</h1>
<p>… primary content, matched case-insensitively, whole word …</p>
</main>How to optimize it
Place the page’s unique primary content inside a proper <main> landmark, and cover the topic naturally and comprehensively there. Treat the count as an observation of where your content lives, not a number to maximize — the goal is a genuinely complete main section, not padding it with repeated variations.
Important considerations
- Nested markup remains in the measured capture — there is no cleaning pass, so any tags between the paired
mainelements stay in the counted text. - Regex parsing can be sensitive to complex nesting, which may affect what the capture group returns on deeply nested pages.
- A page should generally have one primary
mainlandmark. - The metric does not verify landmark accessibility — it confirms the tag is present and captures its contents, not that the landmark is used correctly for assistive technology.
- This is a correlation-based prioritization signal, not a cause of ranking. A higher count relates to position within a measured result set; it does not make a page rank or guarantee any position.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.