Variations in Del Tags counts how many times your keyword and its close variations appear inside HTML <del> elements — the tag that marks content as deleted or removed in a revision. It returns a whole-number occurrence count from the raw captured text, and because del flags obsolete content, most sound pages legitimately score zero here.
| Factor ID | RG-KWD-045 |
|---|---|
| Family | Keyword Usage & Density |
| Measurement | Variation occurrence count |
| Measured zone | Raw captured del contents |
What it measures
This factor counts keyword variations in content that has been marked as deleted with <del> elements. The del tag is a semantic marker for text that was removed as part of an edit or revision — it says, in markup, “this content no longer applies.” RankGear looks only at the text held inside those tags, so the score reflects how often your keyword and its variations show up specifically in copy you have flagged as deleted, not anywhere else on the page.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear extracts the contents of recognized del elements and totals case-insensitive, whole-word matches for your keyword and its variations. Unlike zones that are normalized first, the del contents are read as raw captured text, without an extra cleaning pass — the text is matched as it was captured. The result is a single count across all del contents on the page.
What RankGear looks for
<del>Old pricing: keyword variations counted here</del>
<p>Updated copy that lives outside <del> is not counted by this factor.</p>| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0 | Expected for most pages — no keyword variations sit inside deleted content. |
| Greater than 0 | Keyword variations were found in text marked <del>. Confirm the deletion is intentional and genuinely obsolete, not a place you are stashing keywords. |
How to optimize it
Treat this as an observation, not a target. Use <del> only when you are documenting a meaningful deletion or revision — a corrected figure, a retired policy, an edited passage — and never as a way to hold extra keyword coverage in obsolete text. A rising count here is not an optimization goal in itself; if variations appear in your deleted content, it should be because the removed text genuinely mentioned them, not because you placed them there for the score.
Important considerations
- Deleted content may still be visible on the page, but
<del>carries a specific semantic meaning — it flags the text as removed or superseded. - Because the contents are captured raw, nested markup inside a
delelement can influence what gets counted. - Most pages should score zero on this factor, and a zero is normal rather than a defect.
- Increasing this count is not an optimization goal by itself; it simply reflects your revision markup.
- This is a correlation-based prioritization signal within a measured result set, not a lever that makes a page rank or guarantees a position.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.