Keyword Proximity

What is Keyword Proximity ?

The relative placement of keywords in prominent areas of a Web page, including the distance between keywords in the visible text.

Keyword Proximity refers to the distance between two words or phrases, or how close keywords are to each other within a body of text.

A search term can be made up of a combination of keywords. The keyword proximity refers to the distance between the search term’s individual keywords.

1. For example: a website contains the keywords that make up the search term “dentist Washington implant” in the heading “Your professional dentist in Washington; dental practice for minimally invasive implants”. The search term proximity between “dentist” and “Washington” is one word, between “Washington” and “implant” it is five words. The smaller the distance between a search term’s individual keywords, the more relevant it will be from a search engine‘s point of view.

The closer the two keywords are to each other, the higher the weight for that phrase.

2. Consider these two examples:

We sell Red widgets at a price you can afford.

All our affordable widgets come in shades of Red.

The phrase Red widgets has better keyword proximity in the first example than in the second, as the words are closer to each other. If all else were equal, the first example would rank higher than the second.