What is a co-occurrence word? Thorough explanation of the latest writing knowledge essential for content SEO

A co-occurring word is a word that is often used with a certain keyword. Using co-occurring words makes it easier to reach a wide range of users who need information about the content.

Google consistently states that search rankings are based on ‘good and useful content’. However, as a content creator, you may feel the frustration of not being able to rank high in search rankings, even though you are proud to publish it on the media as “good and useful content.” .

“Good and useful content” is content that is rated as “useful and good quality” by both users looking for a solution (answers and how to solve problems) and search engines. It is imperative to set co-occurrences with appropriate keywords while focusing on users to understand “why did they search for that keyword?” and create problem-solving content.

In this article, while explaining co-occurring words in an easy-to-understand manner, I will explain how to create content by assembling them as a story rather than just connecting keywords and co-occurring words . We will also introduce tools that are useful for extracting co-occurring words.

Table of Contents

There are “keywords”, “co-occurring words”, “related keywords” and “suggest words” that are good to know when writing for the web. If you understand the relationship between “keywords”, “related keywords” and “suggested words”, you will be able to understand the meaning of each word.

Co-occurrences tell search engines what content is about

Imagine that you were thrown into a group of people who didn’t know a language that no one knew. Suppose you first notice the person who always stands in the center of everyone and gives instructions. You decide that person is probably the most important person in this group.

In addition, there are a few people who are always with the leader. You’re thinking, “That group must be the people in the leadership position of the group.”

Then, looking at the behavior of the group, they will try to guess what this group is.

Search engines will react exactly the same as you. Search engines use keywords and words that are commonly used together to try to find out what your content is about. In other words, using keywords and their “co-occurrences” gives search engines clues about what your content is about.

Let’s take a look at a concrete example.

What is the word “subscription” used with? Let’s look up “subscription” with a co-occurring word search tool that tells you the co-occurring words used in the top 30 search sites . The number in parenthesis is the number of times it is used in the top 30 articles.

[Extracted co-occurrence words]

• Subscription (505)
• Service(472)
• Use(174)
• Business(158)
• Free(141)
• Sub (123)
• School (109)
• Fee(107)
• Fixed amount (104)
• Information (100)
• model(94)
• Period(92)
• monthly(89)
• article(79)
• Marketing(78)
• Unlimited(69) 

Search engines recognize that the co-occurrence word “service” is the word most likely to co-occur with “subscription.” From this, I guess that the word “subscription service” is often used as a compound word (a word that changes the meaning).

The next most frequently used word is “use”. Search engines recognize that a subscription service is something that can be “used” or “used”.

Since it is often used together with “business”, we judge that “subscription” is a word in the big category of “business”.

Since there are words for “free” and “fee”, search engines guess that “use” may be “charged” or “free” when combined with “use”.

Search engines, which are not good at grasping content from context, try to understand the entire text while picking up co-occurring words. Then, the content that contains many “co-occurrence words” used by the site judged to be “good and useful” is judged to be “this is also good and useful” .

“Related keywords” try to narrow down where the user’s search intent is

Words that are very similar to co-occurring words have related keywords. If you search for “subscription” on Google, a list of “related search terms” will appear at the bottom of the screen. This is the relevant keyword.

Co-occurring words are words that are closely related to the content, while related keywords are words that are closely related to users.

For example, let’s say you are unwell and visit a doctor. When you say, “I have a fever,” the doctor asks, “How long have you been sick?” and “Do you have a runny nose?”

Search engines are no different. Similar to the doctor’s question, search engines are trying to pinpoint a user’s search intent, and instead of asking a question, they say, “Many users search for the word subscription along with these words, but you Which of these do you want to know?”

Suggest words organize search intent at the entrance

There is a word “suggest word” that is very similar to related keywords. This is similar to general hospital guidance. If you want to see a doctor at a general hospital, you first have to decide which department you want to see at the reception.

When you say “I’m not feeling well” at the reception desk, “Many people first see an internal medicine doctor when they feel unwell” or “Many people see an otolaryngologist when they have a sore throat.” And he will give you some advice before you go to the doctor.

The same is true for suggest words, when users enter keywords in the search window, the search engine presents to the user that “many people are searching for these words together”, saving the trouble of entering them in the search window. I will try to stay with you. Suggest words, like related keywords, narrow down the user’s search intent and try to find web pages that are closer to the user’s search intent.

Summarizing the above, we can see that the relationship between keywords, co-occurring words, related words, and suggested words is as shown in the figure below.

In other words, “co-occurring words”, “related keywords” and “suggest words” can be summarized as follows.

• Co-occurrences help search engines to more accurately understand what your content is about.
• Related keywords and suggested words reflect the user’s search intent

What is the most important thing in web writing? Many people will probably answer “Do SEO measures and be displayed high in search”.

It doesn’t matter how good your article is if it doesn’t reach the people who need it. Content creators must always keep in mind the perspective of search engine optimization (SEO).

From here, we will consider why co-occurring words are important when considering SEO.

By using co-occurring words, you can judge that the content is highly related to the keyword.

Content that search engines recognize as “good and useful” is content that allows searchers to quickly understand what they want to know, and at the same time, has content that can be understood more deeply and broadly.

Search engines use co-occurrence words used with keywords as a guide to determine that “the information is deeply related to the keyword”. And if you write using a lot of co-occurring words, we will judge that the content is useful for a deeper and broader understanding.

Co-occurring words are a sign to search engines of high-quality, useful content that is closely related to a keyword .

Content can be modified by understanding and predicting changes in co-occurring words over time.

Search engines judge new information to be more “good and useful” than old information. Web pages that are left unattended will gradually lose their search rankings over time. Therefore, it is necessary to rework little by little.

You can determine when and where to rework by using the co-occurring word search tool to track how the co-occurring words of the top search sites change.

Search keywords and suggestion words react sensitively when something big happens. Whether or not what the user “want to know now” matches what they want to know over the long term cannot be determined by looking at search keywords or suggested words.

On the other hand, changes in co-occurring words on top search sites take some time to reflect the user’s search intent. By confirming changes in co-occurring terms, it is possible to determine changes in users’ search intentions that are not temporary.

For example, in the 1980s, co-occurring words for the word “design” would have been mainly words such as “clothes,” “cars,” and “cities.”

In the 1990s, with the spread of computers, the words “web” and “site” joined the co-occurrence of design.

With the addition of “IT” to the co-occurring words of “design” today, the context in which the word “design” is used has changed considerably.

If you look at the suggested words for “design,” the word “thinking” appears, and it can be seen that the search needs for “what is design thinking?” are increasing.

“Design thinking” workshops are being held in business settings, and it is expected that the word “thinking” will be added to the co-occurring words. Instead of simply adding new words, it is necessary to respond to changes in the context in which keywords and co-occurring words are placed. This allows us to meet the needs of our users.

Co-occurrences have roles beyond SEO. It is possible to create content using co-occurring words. Here, we will explain how to create content using co-occurring words.

Co-occurrence words spread around keywords

Let’s look at the list of co-occurrences of the word “subscription” again.

[Extracted co-occurrence words]

• subscription
• service
• use
• business
• free
• sub
• School
• Fee
• Fixed amount
• information
• model
• period
• Monthly
• article
• marketing
• Unlimited

If you look closely, you’ll notice that co-occurring words can be divided into several groups as follows.

[Categorization according to the relationship with the keyword “subscription”]
Things that are semantically equal to the keyword:
Things that are similar to the “subscription” keyword:
Things that are inclusive with the “flat rate (system)” keyword: “Business” Company” “Marketing”
Keywords and antonyms … “Prices”
Composite words … “Subscription services” “Subscription model”
Keywords and cause or effect relationships … Subscription and usage, Subscription and monthly fee , Subscription and Unlimited

In the above, “fee” is considered to be “not a flat rate, but an individual fee” and is treated as a antonym, but it can also be added to the cause and effect category. It can also be thought of as an inclusive term in a subscription, such as the “duration” or “price” of the subscription. In this way, individual words can be grouped into different categories depending on their context.

Let’s make a model diagram of co-occurring words centered on this keyword.

Co-occurring words that spread around keywords spread while having various relationships with keywords, such as synonymous/synonymous relationships, antonymous relationships, inclusion relationships, compound relationships, and causal relationships.

How to create content using co-occurrences?

If I write an article that covers the co-occurring words that the top 30 sites use a lot, will search engines recognize it as “good and useful content” just like the top 30 sites? Google’s search engine isn’t very good at evaluating text accurately, so it may add it to the top of the search results for the time being. But what about the ratings of users who visit your website?

First, compare the following two examples.

Comparing example 1 and example 2, 1 should feel very confusing. This is because example sentence 1 contains a mixture of sentences written for users, sentences written for companies that provide subscription services, and sentences written from a bird’s-eye view of the situation, so the overall Because I can’t grasp what you want to say.

Example 2 is easy to understand because it is written from a consistent, bird’s-eye view of subscriptions. Thus, it is important to focus on one point of view .

As in Example 1, users who are forced to read sentences that do not have a fixed point of view will feel pain and will immediately leave the web page. Even if a website is temporarily displayed at the top of search results due to co-occurring words, a website that causes users to leave in a short period of time will quickly lose its ranking as a web page with low user satisfaction.

Create a story using co-occurrences

It is often said that “Story is important in web writing”, but many people may have had trouble hearing this. That’s because the meaning of the story is not clearly explained.

A story is a story in which “what happened” and “what will happen” are told along the time series of “beginning”, “middle” and “end” of the person or thing that is the focus .

Specifically, you must first decide whether the focus of your story is the user, the company that provides it, or the perspective of the overall situation.

Next, think about what to put in the “beginning”, “middle” and “end”. Writing chronologically is also writing about cause and effect.

In addition, the purpose of the content must be kept in mind when writing content marketing essays . You must always tell the reader what action you want them to take (CTA = Call to Action), such as “I want you to consider purchasing,” “I want you to download the materials for consideration,” and “I want you to inquire.” not.

Let’s create the framework of the story based on the above three steps. I’m going to write a short story here for companies wondering whether to consider a subscription service.

In the story part, I added the search keyword “benefits”. Try to incorporate search words that directly reflect the user’s search intent somewhere.

In this way, instead of simply sprinkling co-occurring words, you can create content with deeper content by combining co-occurring words grouped according to the skeleton of the story.

What is an attractive story for users?

When creating content, it is necessary to understand the intentions of search users and create content that can solve the problems that users have. What problems do users have when searching for a certain keyword?

First, let’s check the three intentions of users when searching on the Internet.

①Navigation
Search to browse specific websites. Whether you’re watching YouTube or shopping on Amazon, this is the case when you use search to visit the website you want.

(2) Information gathering
When a user encounters a problem or wants to know something, the first thing to do is search. You may search for “what is SEO” to find out what a word you don’t know means, or you may be looking for ways to get to a place you are planning to travel to. In many cases, users can achieve their goals simply by searching.

(3 ) It is a search that assumes action after the execution search. Examples include calling the service center with “Printer Troubleshooting”, starting a job change with “Job Change Business Annual Income”, and purchasing a book by entering “book title amazon”.

In content marketing, it is important to provide valuable information to users for the purpose of (2) “information gathering” and to prepare a lead to (3) “execution” . An example is a powerful conductor .

Users are attracted to someone’s real experience, not generalities or abstractions . If that “someone” has many things in common with the user, you can feel that the event is closer to you.

In the example sentences I gave earlier, I introduced actual examples of “Netflix for video distribution service”, “Sansan for business card management service”, and “user cancellation”. Find among the achievements we have provided to . In particular, introducing examples of difficult experiences and solutions should be conveyed to users as a great attraction of the products and services your company provides.

In October 2019, Google announced an update to its search algorithm. The introduction of the natural language processing system BERT has improved the accuracy of understanding complex and conversational queries. I would like to know what the update will bring.

What will change with the introduction of BERT?

Google has revealed that its search algorithm can now correctly understand the sentence “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa.” .

Previously, BERT was able to understand the preposition “to” and brought the web page for “American travelers to Brazil” to the top of the search results. It first displayed the web page for travelers of the American Embassy in .

There are more such cases.

When searching for the sentence “Can you get medecine for someone pharmacy”, the method of getting a prescription was conventionally displayed at the top of the search. This time, “How to get your family and friends to receive prescription drugs” can now be displayed at the top of searches. Again, the preposition “for”, which was previously incomprehensible, is now understood, so that “get” can be understood as a causative verb “to be brought” instead of “to obtain”. You can see that it has become

I don’t know if the ability to identify prepositions of adjunctive words, which conventional search engines were not good at, will lead to the ability to identify Japanese particles.

However, Pandu Nayak says that it is the identification features for featured snippets that will directly impact us as non-English speakers.

A featured snippet is the portion of your site framed at the top of the search screen, as shown below. An example is the sentence “parking on a hill with no curb”.

In the past, we focused on “parking on a hill”, which is often searched for, without paying much attention to the word “no”. But now, does “no” mean “without” as shown above? After confirming that, the page that explains how to park without a curb is listed as a featured snippet. Even non-standard English “with no” instead of “without” shows that BERT correctly understands it.

Impact of BERT on Content Marketing

Japanese and English have completely different grammatical structures and notations, so how this algorithm update will affect Japanese content, and if so, when will it affect? I can’t say anything at this stage.

It has long been pointed out that in order for search engines to accurately find the content you create, you need to be spell-free, use standard grammar, and above all, be user searchable. Wouldn’t it be best to ensure that you create content that matches your intent and use keywords and co-occurrences that correspond exactly to what the content is about?

Knowing what co-occurring words are used by the sites that are displayed at the top of the search results is extremely important both in terms of SEO measures and content creation.

Here, we introduce sites that provide free co-occurrence search tools and other tools useful for writing articles.

Introduction of free co-occurrence search tool

If you use a tool that can easily check co-occurring words, you can easily know the co-occurring words of keywords.

Co-occurrence search tool

It extracts the co-occurrence words used in the top 30 sites.

Find Word

It introduces co-occurrence words used in the top 10 sites. Also, a notable feature of this tool is that if you enter your site URL in the “Search URL” field, it will tell you which co-occurring words are missing on your site.

A tool that allows you to check synonyms, post-associations, and paraphrases

In addition to including co-occurring words in articles, you can create articles with greater depth and density by knowing their synonyms, related words, and paraphrases.

Use a thesaurus or associative thesaurus to deepen the theme from various angles.

Weblio

Weblio is useful when you want to know synonyms, synonyms, related words, paraphrases, etc.

Associative dictionary

When you want to know the words associated with a keyword, the associative dictionary can find words related to the keyword in a wider range than general synonyms.

“Good and useful content” is not something that can only be created by people who are good at writing sentences. Anyone can create something as long as it provides the right solution for someone with a problem.

Conversely, no matter how original and well-written your web page is, if it doesn’t provide the right solution, Google won’t even rank it high on the search listing screen.

In order to reach the people who need it, it is necessary to clearly write the “destination” of the content so that search engines can recognize it. Therefore, make use of co-occurrences, not just keywords. Please understand that SEO is a measure to deliver content to those who need it.

In addition, understanding co-occurrences can make content more relevant to people who are having problems. The more we know the search intent, the better solutions we can propose.

Inform your users, tell them that you have a solution, but also ask them, “How do I get the solution?” and “What should I do next?” Co-occurrence words are always useful for you to create good and useful content.