Yes
That’s it, you can close this page and return to your kitten videos, or whatever you were paying attention to before opening it! 🙂
Oh, like, you want real proof and stuff?
Aaaaaah. Okay, sure.
Or maybe you don’t even know what the keyword golden ratio is. That’s good, and hold back then because you’re going a keyword treat.
For those of you wondering what “KGR” means or where it comes from, here’s a quick overview (for those of you who already know, you can immediately skip to the “There’s More Than Meets the Eye” section).
Keywords KGR or The golden ratio of the keyword is a term coined by our friend Doug Cunnington at nichesiteproject.com.
These are basically keywords for which there aren’t enough sites on the entire Internet targeting them for Page 1 to be competitive.
There is a real calculation behind all this and here is Doug’s video so you can see it.
We also recorded a podcast episode with him on the KGR method and here it is part 1 And part 2.
Alright, let’s dig into some details and uses.
There’s more than what meets the eye
Something we’ve discovered over time after searching huge amounts of these keywords is that any keyword with less than 63 “all-title results” could potentially be a very easy win, even if the search volume is well over 250 s/m.
The ratio won’t work on 250 searches, but “capping” the maximum allintitle results at 63 will. Of course, if you watched the video, now understand that 63 results is already 3 pages of search results targeting that exact keyword, but that’s cool because a good number will be forums, Q&A sites, and others that you can easily outrank.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me show you rankings for all KGR keywords I personally targeted one of my sites and what is behind some of these “low search volumes”. (So you can also see that we put our money where our mouth is).
Note: We like to use KW Search and Ahrefs as keyword tools.
If you paid close attention to the image, besides all the #1 ranks (which I’m really quietly bragging about), you’ll notice a few things:
1. It doesn’t always work.
Sometimes keywords don’t rank on pages 1 and 2 immediately. Nearly 80-90% of the time they do, as long as the site has some authority and you leverage topical relevance with good interconnection.
But sometimes it takes them 3 to 4 months to progress.
Hence the baby icon. My God, I should be a designer.
2. Cannibalization.
It’s very easy to target keywords that are too similar and end up eating your hand. Check out the URL for one of the keywords that doesn’t rank anywhere. It is cannibalized by other extremely similar items.
It’s a failure, I’m going to eat.
3. Search volume is still a joke.
These are the two keywords at the beginning with the red box around the SV. So when checking volume, your best bet for getting something accurate is Ahrefs. This point deserves another capture to explain:
And
How do these items drive so much traffic if search volume is “low”?
One is seasonality, which most keyword tools don’t take into account and just spit out a 12-month average (which also doesn’t effectively capture trends. Looking at you restless spinners).
The other is to simply rank a billion variations of the keyword.
Moral of the story: Don’t throw away the whole KGR thing because that goes for “low volume” stuff. You might surprise yourself how well a single article can rank and how much traffic it can generate.
4. It’s a good idea to group similar keywords together.
The example I used is the keywords abc xyz vs 2 vs 4 vs 5. There are about 4 combinations of these.
At first, I found only one: 2 against 4 abc. I knew ABC was available in more sizes, so I decided to create an article doing an “ultimate comparison” between ALL sizes and their usage.
This is a good article, written by an industry expert, and ranks high among all. Traffic is good.
I link to my “best blabla” page for each size. Chief.
5. Note the type of keywords.
This is mostly informational content, plus some “Best Talk” and some “(Brand) (Product) Reviews”.
I intentionally left the modifiers I use to find these keywords when filtering on ahrefs or semrush so you can get ideas when doing keyword research. I’m looking for types, why, when, how, what, best way, problem, get rid of it, sizes, list….
That’s about all there is to say about the image above. I hope this has served to explain why I was tempted to leave the article at “Yes”. There are, however, a few other things you should know.
Known issues
It is difficult to find KGR keywords around products. The formula that works is “the best ABC for XYZ,” but depending on the niche, you’ll only find a handful. The smaller the niche, the more difficult it is. It is much easier to find informational keywords.
Money, green, moolah, cash, guita, pasta, parné…
Informational content does not make money on its own. Hmm… so how can we get around this?
I use KGR info keywords to support silver coins.
So if I have an article about “best straight razors” and I find 4 or 5 KGR pieces of information about shaving or straight razors, I will use them to increase my topical relevance and send internal anchors to push that silver coin.
I also use some of them (the ones not ha-rated) as power/buffer pages.
Every time I build links, instead of sending 20 links to my target page, I send 10 and distribute 10 more among the supporting materials.
Keeps things more natural, reduces the chance of getting slapped by breaking the link speed.
Alright, if you liked this article and are ready to try implementing KGR keywords into your content plan, we have the solution to save you a lot of time! OUR KGR Keyword Pack will give you hundreds of good KGR compliant keywords to target. This can literally save you hours or days of keyword research.
Have a good time!
