Yes
Here you can close this page and go back to your kitten videos or whatever else you were paying attention to before opening this! 🙂
Oh, you want some actual evidence and stuff?
Aaaaah. Okay, sure.
Or maybe you don’t know what the Keyword Golden Ratio is. It’s okay and brace yourself because you’re ready keyword treatment.
A quick recap for those of you wondering what the word “KGR” means or where it comes from (for those who already know, you can skip right to “There’s More Than Meets the Eye”)
KGR keywords or Keyword Golden Ratio is a term coined by our friend Doug Cunnington nichesiteproject.com.
This essentially refers to keywords that don’t have enough sites targeting them to be competitive on page 1 across the entire web.
There’s actual math behind it, and here’s Doug’s video to help you understand.
We also recorded a podcast episode with him about the KGR method and here it is Part 1 and Part 2.
Well, let’s explore some details and uses.
There’s More Than Meets the Eye
One thing we’ve discovered over time after researching a large amount of these keywords is that any keyword with less than 63 “results in the title” is a pretty easy win, even if the search volume is over 250 s/m.
The ratio won’t work for more than 250 searches, but “cap” the maximum allintitle results at 63. Of course, if you’ve watched the video, now realize that 63 results are already 3 pages of search results targeting that keyword, but that’s great because a good number will be forums, Q&A sites, and the like.
Now that we 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 these “low search volumes”. (So you can see we’re putting our money where our mouth is).
Note: We like to use it KW Finder and Ahrefs as our keyword tools.–.
If you pay close attention to the picture, in addition to all the #1 ratings (which I’m just bragging about), you’ll notice a few things:
1. It doesn’t always work.
Sometimes keywords don’t rank pages 1-2 right away. Almost 80-90% as long as the site has some authority and you use up-to-date relevance with good connectivity.
But sometimes it may take 3-4 months for them to rise.
Hence the baby symbol. God, I should be a designer.
2. Cannibalization.
It’s very easy to target keywords that are too similar and end up eating your own hand. Look at the URL of one of the keywords that is not ranking anywhere. It is cannibalized by other extremely similar articles.
I will eat failure.
3. Search volume is still a joke.
It is about the two keywords at the beginning with the red box around the SV. So when you check volume, your best bet is Ahrefs. This point deserves another capture to explain itself:
And
How do these pieces get so much traffic if the search volume is “low”?
One is seasonality, which most keyword tools ignore and just spit out 12-month averages (which doesn’t effectively reflect trends. We’re looking at you. fidget spinners).
Another just ranks for a bajillion variations of a keyword.
Moral of the story: Don’t throw out the whole KGR thing because it goes for “Low volume” products. You might be surprised how well an article can rank and how much traffic it can get.
4. It’s smart to group similar keywords together.
The example I use is the keywords xyz vs 2 vs 4 vs 5 abc. There are 4 combinations of these.
I found only one at first: 2 vs 4 abc. I knew ABC was available in more sizes, so I decided to create an “ultimate comparison” article between ALL the sizes and their uses.
This is a good article written by an industry expert for all. Traffic is good.
I link to my “best blabla” page for each size. boss.
5. Pay attention to the type of keywords.
It’s mostly informational stuff, with some “Best of Blabla” and some “(Brand) (Product) Review”.
I’ve intentionally left out the modifiers I use to find those keywords when filtering in ahrefs or semrush so you can get an idea when doing keyword research. I’m looking for types, why, when, how, what, best way, problem, get rid of, sizes, list….
That’s pretty much all about the picture above. I hope that served to explain why I wanted to leave the article as “Yes” only. However, there are a few other things you should know.
Known issues
Finding KGR keywords around products is difficult. The formula that works is “Best ABC for XYZ”, but depending on the niche, you may find a handful. The smaller the niche, the harder it is. Finding information keywords is a ton easier.
Money, green, moolah, money, gitita, pasta, parne…
Data content is not monetized by itself. Hmh… how do we get around that?
I use KGR data keywords to support the money parts.
If I have an article about “best straight razors” and I find 4 or 5 KGR of information about shaving or straight razors, I will use them to increase my relevance and send some internal anchors to push that piece of money.
I also use some of them (the ones without the ha rating) as power/buffer pages.
Whenever I build links, instead of sending 20 links to my target page, I will send 10 and distribute another 10 between the support pieces.
It keeps things more natural, reducing the chance of slapping by disrupting the transition speed.
Well, if you liked this article and are ready to implement KGR keywords into your content plan, we have found a solution to save you a lot of time! Ours KGR Keyword Pack will give you hundreds of good KGR relevant keywords to target. It can literally save you hours or days of keyword research.
Good luck!
