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Niche Vocabulary – Why Poor Content Can’t Hide in Google

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Niche Vocabulary

Google can spot bad content a mile off and consign it to the supplemental index, but there is a simple solution to making sure big G sit up and take note – use your niche vocabulary.

When an expert in any field writes an article, there is a certain vocabulary associated with the topic of the article. Someone who knows the topic very well will use that vocabulary naturally within the article and in fact needs to use it if the article is to be a quality piece on the topic.

Someone who really doesn’t know the topic will struggle to perhaps not only find, but also use the niche vocabulary correctly … and this content will stick out … in a bad way!

Could you write without this vocabulary?

Let’s assume you want an article written on Epilepsy. You tell your ghost writer that you want a 600 word article on Epilepsy but, they MUST NOT use any of the following phrases:

symptoms of epilepsy, ketogenic diet, epilepsy treatment, part of the brain, areas of the brain, location in the brain, portion of the brain, types of epilepsy, living with epilepsy, types of seizures, death in epilepsy, aid for seizures, complex partial seizures, generalized tonic-clonic seizures, temporal lobe, epileptic seizures, epilepsy therapy, epilepsy surgery, epilepsy syndromes, seizure type, vagus nerve, generalized seizures, absence epilepsy

.. or any of the following words:

epilepsy, seizure, treatment, seizures, unit, age, log, surgery, test, children, brain, medical, health, control, time, diet, doctor, side, help, part, research, diagnosis, information, cause, life, medications, support, anti, ketogenic, drugs, take, guide, special, term, develop, work, home, plan, living, symptoms, types, aid, epileptic

How good do you think your article would be?

Not great I’d bet.

The reason is simply that in order to write a quality piece on Epilepsy, you MUST include some of these words & phrases – they are the vocabulary of the topic!

To highlight the point, those 43 words in the list above appear on at least 7 of the top 10 pages that rank in Google for the term Epilepsy.

These words and phrases are the vocabulary of this niche.

Now epilepsy is a huge topic, so let’s specialize a little to see how the niche vocabulary changes.

Let’s repeat this experiment but use the term “epilepsy treatment” instead.

Here are the kinds of phrases found in articles that are ranking in the top 10 of Google for “epilepsy treatment”. Again, can you imagine writing a quality article without including at least some of these phrases?:

surgical options for epilepsy, used to treat epilepsy, effects of epilepsy drugs, vagus nerve stimulation, options for epilepsy, diagnosis of epilepsy, seizure hot spots, temporal lobe epilepsy, epilepsy treatment, ketogenic diet, vagus nerve, side effects, epilepsy surgery, patient stories, nerve stimulation, treatment options, treat epilepsy, seizure disorder, children’s hospital, temporal lobe, control seizures, prevent seizures, epilepsy drugs, drug therapy, surgical options, antiseizure medicine, epilepsy drug, seizure medicines, pediatric eeg, treat patients, pediatric neurologists, new therapies, antiepileptic medicines, surgical treatments

In the initial search on epilepsy the phrases were more general in nature. These ones are a lot more specific to actually treating the disease. See how there is a subtle change in the vocabulary that is used?

The following 51 words appear on at least 7 of the top 10 pages that rank for the term “epilepsy treatment”:

epilepsy, seizure, treat, treatment, seizures, unit, age, log, surgery, test, children, brain, medical, health, control, medication, time, diet, doctor, side, drug, help, part, research, diagnosis, information, effects, cause, life, medications, nerve, support, anti, ketogenic, drugs, vagus, take, stimulation, guide, reserved, special, term, develop, work, home, tests, fact, plan, related, living, map

OK, so what’s my point?

Well my point becomes a little more obvious if we look further down the search results. Google tells us that there are 13,600,000 pages in their index that match this query.

query

However, if we go through Google (I have switched Google over to show me 100 pages of SERPs at a time), and scroll to the very last page, Google tells us something very interesting:

Google tells us something very interesting

Do you see how Google says that only 801 pages are included in the main index?

Google is filtering out poor content as well as content that it just doesn’t think adds anything extra to the information & value available on this topic. In effect, Google has picked the best 801 pages that fully represent this topic – any page outside this set of 801 won’t be ranking for term “epilepsy treatment”!

Do you know what those 801 pages have in common?

They use the “epilepsy treatment” niche vocabulary.

As an experiment I picked pages ranked at various levels in the SERPs, and looked at how many of the 51 “theme words” I listed above are included in the “average page” ranked at that level. Here are my results:

average page

This table should be fairly straight forward to read but essentially show the average values for a group of pages ranked at different levels in the SERPs.

The columns are as follows:

Position – where in the SERPs the pages were collected to perform the analysis. You will note a number in brackets after the SERP position. This reflects the number of pages analyzed. In most cases it is 10, but in a couple of cases, some pages were not available when I visited, so they were excluded and you see that 8 pages were used in the 100-109 positions, and 8 in the 600-609 positions.

Page Words – the average total number of words on the page.

% Theme Words Used – This column shows the average percentage of the 51 theme words identified earlier that are used on the pages.

Theme Words Per Article – This shows how many of the “Page Words” were actually “theme words” i.e. on of my 51 words chosen as niche vocabulary.

When I first show this type of data to people, they are often surprised to see that even those pages ranked towards the ends of the SERPs have such high levels of “niche vocabulary” (remember Google only includes 801 pages in the main SERPs for this phrase so we are checking pages that are way down the pecking order).

I am not really sure why this should surprise anyone, since Google are trying to show only the best articles for this (and every other) search term, and any quality piece will NEED to use the niche’s vocabulary.

A word about the data I have used

The theme words and phrases that make up the niche vocabulary in these Epilepsy experiments were taken from the top 10 pages in Google.

However, since ALL of the pages in the main SERPs use a similar niche vocabulary for this search phrase, I could actually collect my theme phrases from any of the 801 pages that Google deems relevant for “epilepsy treatment”. I have actually done this experiment in another article if you are interested in seeing the results – you can read it in my blog post under the section “A Flaw in My Methods?”

So what does this mean for Webmasters?

There are a few lessons to be learnt from this type of data:

  1. There is a “smallish” group of pages that Google sees as relevant for every search term. This number is actually a lot less than most people think. If you are not in that group, you have no chance of ranking in the SERPs for that term. That doesn’t mean your page is permanently in the supplemental index, it just means that it is in the supplemental index for that particular search term because Google does not think it is good enough, or adds anything extra to those pages already in the group.
  2. There is a niche vocabulary for every search term. Pages that Google include in the SERPs usually use that vocabulary and if you want your page to stand any chance of ranking for a search term, you should be using the correct vocabulary too.

Final Summary

If you are an expert in the field that you are writing about, then you do not need to worry about niche vocabulary. You know what it is already and will use it naturally as you write your content. If, however, you are hiring ghostwriters that are not experts in the field, you better make sure they are doing their research properly or your page could end up hidden in an index that rarely sees the light.

About

Dr. Andy Williams has been studying & experimenting with search engine optimization for nearly 10 years and teaches his methods in his weekly Internet Marketing Newsletter, where you can download his free "Future-Proof SEO Guide" - no optin required. He is also a programmer, and has created a number of tools including Web Content Studio - a tool to help authors create better quality content.

Reader Interactions

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{ 29 Responses }

  1. Owen Richason says:
    "Google is filtering out poor content as well as content that it just doesn’t think adds anything extra to the information & value available on this topic." Your research once again proves content is king. Site owners ought to take notice. Content not only is necessary to tell visitors what a site is about, it's necessary to contribute something to the Internet.
  2. Specialist Mark says:
    Hey Andy So simple yet so hard....at least that's how internet marketers make it out to be! Content is king as they say and it always should be. Quality content will naturally contain the "Niche Vocabulary" as you've mentioned so talking about keyword stuffing really should be out the door, especially after the Panda update. Anyways, just wanted to thank you for writing this and giving me a place to point clients to when they question the keyword density of content we've helped them write :) Sincerely, Mark
    • Andy says:
      Hi Mark Glad the article can be of use. Too many clients think they know what they need ;)
  3. Robert says:
    Hi there Andy - great article Don't get me wrong When I say this but is this an article on LSI? Or am I missing something! because LSI is not new It is something that has been around for years. the Golden Nugget I received from this post is that the longer your article Is the more related or niche vocabulary you will have in your article hence it will rank better. Now I understand why Google likes long articles Opposed to short ones.
    • Andy says:
      Hi Robert Yes it is all related to LSI which isn't new as you say, however, it isn't really very well understood by a lot of people, so this article took a different angle of attack.
  4. Scott says:
    Very interesting. I actuallyjust stumbled upon that google limitation on the last page of search results last night. I was searching for my new website and after 7 pages I saw that message and sadly my site was not among the featured index pages for that particular search term. Thank you for explaining a possible reason for being limited to the supplemental index. Now I have a question. Broad vs exact match. If I type my search term in with quotes then I fall at about #150 but without the quotes I don't show up at all for my 3 word phrase. Is this just because the number of exact matches is much fewer so my site has a greater chance of reaching the results? Thanks
    • Andy Williams says:
      Ultimately, yes. However, the two searches bring back a different set of pages. When you search without quotes (as most people do) you bring back pages that have those words in them, but not necessarily as a complete phrase. Obviously there is a greater number of pages matching this search term, so you have to compete with a much bigger group of pages. When you search with quotes, Google brings back pages that have the exact search term in the page. There will be fewer of these and therefore less overall competition (although real competition is probably higher for most exact phrases as these are targeted by webmasters and SEOs) so you have to compete with a higher calibre page.
  5. AstroGremlin says:
    Andy, this article clarifies the sophistication of Google. The articles of mine it chooses to reward with high ranking have been a source of puzzlement. Based on your explanation, it would seem that long articles would offer a greater opportunity to show that an article uses expert vocabulary. Even an expert isn't likely to use every relevant term in a few sentences, but a longer article would get around to different aspects of a topic (and more "magic words"). Certainly like the idea that if I know the topic, it will be reflected in the words I use naturally and Google will see that.
    • Andy Williams says:
      The thing is, generally speaking the narrower the topic of the article, the less theme words and phrases you will find, and the shorter the article. When you have a broader topic that could reach 1500+ words, there are likely to be more theme words and phrases associated with the topic.
  6. jigar doshi says:
    very informative post. thank you :) but what is not really mentioned is what really to do to achieve the niche vocabulary or how to be an expert in the particular field ? extensive reading ?
    • Andy says:
      Extensive research is one way. I personally use Web Content Studio to tell me the niche vocabulary of whatever topic I am writing about. Not only does it tell me the niche vocabulary (the niche vocabulary in the epilepsy examples in the article were found with WCS) but it can also help structure my article by telling me what phrases are important.
  7. Brent says:
    Ah yes, the dreaded omitted results. Due to the fact that many people just care about links and not readers, do you think we will ever get everyone in the "high quality content is the way to go" boat?
    • Andy says:
      There are always going to be people who try to game the system and get poor content ranking through massive backlinking. However, ultimately Google will penalise these pages because it monitors real users activity. They know if a page has a high bounce rate, or if the average time on a page is only 20 seconds. If they know that data, what do you think they will do with pages like this? Trying to trick Google into better rankings is only ever going to be short-term.
  8. Stevey says:
    Good post! Basically this is a guide to the people who suffered Google's heavy handed Panda update. Provide quality LSI content and don't get penalized by future updates. It may take longer to write the article but the benefits are obvious.
    • Andy Williams says:
      Totally agree Stevey. Well themed content does take longer to write, but it is well worth it. One benefit of theming content is that your page also gets found for a huge number of long tail phrases. My themed content typically gets found for 100-200 different phrases every month. Theme your content and you never have to optimize for long tail phrases ever again.
  9. James Martell says:
    Hi Andy, great to see you. I so agree with you. A true topic expert would naturally write a "niche vocabulary" rich article. They are intimate with the topic and would naturally share the nuances a lay person simply doesn't know. It's so interesting that you also used "epilepsy" as an example. I even noticed you mentioned the ketogenic diet. It is something my wife Arlene and I are so familiar with. We credit the diet for saving our oldest son's life. It is also another example of a "niche vocabulary" (thanks for the great phrase) that would only be known by someone with experience with the topic. My wife interviewed Jim Abraham from the Charlie Foundation, a huge proponent of the diet. The language used in the podcast, if transcribed, would be naturally rich with the "niche vocabulary" of the topic -- because they are both so familiar with the topic. You can fake this stuff. Here's a link to the interview I referenced above: Hollywood Producer Unveils the Ketogenic Diet as an Effective Treatment for His Own Son, and For Many Other Epileptic Children http://www.epilepsymoms.com/podcast/jim-abrahams-charlie-foundation-ketogenic-diet.html Good to see you. James PS - I would love to have you as a guest on the Affiliate Buzz to discuss this if you're available.
    • Andy says:
      Hi James Yes, I know about your son's epilepsy history. In fact the morning I wrote this article I had just finished listening to a podcast where Arlene was discussing it. That is probably why I chose the topic :) P.S. I would love to be a guest on the Buzz to discuss this.
  10. James Martell says:
    Hi Andy, great to see you. I so agree with you. A true topic expert would naturally write a "niche vocabulary" rich article. They are intimate with the topic and would naturally share the nuances a lay person simply doesn't know. It's so interesting that you also used "epilepsy" as an example. I even noticed you mentioned the ketogenic diet. It is something my wife Arlene and I are so familiar with. We pretty much credit it for saving our oldest son's life. It is another example of a "niche vocabulary" (thanks for the great phrase) that would only be known by someone with experience with the topic. My wife interviewed Jim Abraham from the Charlie Foundation, a huge proponent of the diet. The language used in the podcast if transcribed with be rich with the "niche vocabulary" of the topic because they are be some intimately associated with the topic. You can fake this stuff. Here's a link to the interview I referenced above: Hollywood Producer Unveils the Ketogenic Diet as an Effective Treatment for His Own Son, and For Many Other Epileptic Children http://www.epilepsymoms.com/podcast/jim-abrahams-charlie-foundation-ketogenic-diet.html Good to see you. James PS - I would love to have you as a guest on the Affiliate Buzz to discuss this if you're available.
  11. Sarah Arrow says:
    Hi Andy, I really liked this post. A lot of the time I am scared to "overuse" or even use "jargon" in an article and I can see how that could be to my detriment!
    • Andy says:
      Sarah I think the "jargon" is essential. The trick in making the article look and read naturally is not to stuff these theme words. Use them naturally.
  12. Vijayraj Reddy says:
    thanks man, you have really did good research on niche vocabulary...
  13. Richard says:
    I always believe in creating quality content. It's the MAIN COURSE of your blog..
    • Andy Williams says:
      Glad you read my blog. Quality content is the major cornerstone of every successful blog (at least the ones that will be around for the next 10 years.
  14. doug_eike says:
    My focus is on creating high-quality content, and the importance of including lots of keywords in each article is increasingly apparent. It seems to me, however, that good writing and keyword-rich writing overlap but are not the same thing, and I dream of a day when Google will be able to make that subtle distinction. Thanks for your insights!
  15. Wong Chendong aka The Bad Blogger says:
    Though, it seems to be a bit complicated in terms of your research, but I believe you are right about using the niche vocabulary, which was also taught by Frank Kern in his Mass Control 2.0 but of course he don't use "niche vocabulary", he calls it "magic words" for the reason it sounds cool.
  16. TrafficColeman says:
    Too many people think too much when it comes to writing content. If you just let the words flow then you will always have something of value. "Black Seo Guy "Signing Off"
    • Andy Williams says:
      I agree totally and mentioned that in the article. However, if you are not an expert in a topic, it can be difficult to come up with quality content simply because you do not know the topic - therefore don't know the niche vocabulary, let alone how to use it.
  17. Michael says:
    I strongly believe all you said, poor content is a trap for failure especially on Google. Content writers should try to focus on quality content, there is no alternative. If we take time out and write great content, Google would reward us accordingly. You made this sound Simple and guess what, it is!
    • Andy Williams says:
      Hi Michael Yes. Quality content is the key. I am able to rank new content for hundreds of keywords in a very short space of time, just by writing naturally, with quality information that people want to read.