This factor counts how many times your keyword’s word variations appear inside the hostnames of the sites you link out to. It reads only the domain part of each absolute URL in the body — not the anchor text — and it tracks with position within a result set rather than causing a page to rank.
| Factor ID | RG-KWD-059 |
|---|---|
| Family | Keyword Usage & Density |
| Measurement | Variation occurrence count |
| Measured zone | Hostnames from absolute URLs in the body |
What it measures
This factor counts keyword variations that appear in the hostnames of cited URLs. When your page links to an external source, RankGear looks at the domain of that link — the example.com part — and counts how many of your keyword’s word variations show up inside it. It is a narrow, structural read of where your outbound citations point, expressed as a single occurrence count.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear extracts the hostname from every absolute URL found in the script-free body, then sums case-insensitive, whole-word variation matches across those host strings. Scripts are stripped first, each absolute URL is parsed to isolate its hostname, and the matcher tallies every whole-word variation hit across all the hostnames it collected. Relative URLs are ignored because they carry no extractable host.
What RankGear looks for
<a href="https://keyword-example.com/guide">see the source</a>
└─ hostname parsed: keyword-example.com
whole-word variation matches counted here (case-insensitive)How to optimize it
Link to authoritative, relevant sources because they help readers and substantiate your claims — not because their domain names happen to contain your keywords. Treat this count as an observation about the outbound citations you already chose, not as a target to chase. Selecting sources by whether their hostname carries a keyword variation would degrade the very thing citations exist to do: point readers to trustworthy evidence.
Important considerations
- The destination hostname is measured, not the anchor text you wrap the link in.
- Repeated citations to the same host can contribute repeatedly to the count.
- Relative URLs have no extractable host and are not counted.
- A keyword variation in a domain name is not the same as domain relevance, and domain relevance is not the same as source quality.
- This is a correlation, not a cause. A higher count does not make a page rank and guarantees nothing — it tracks with position inside a measured result set as one prioritization signal among many.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.