I’ve always made it a point to focus on topics, quality, and utility, instead of counting how many times I’ve inserted a certain keyword into my blog post. That said, the Keyword Golden Ratio formula or KGR I’m going to talk about today can be useful for new bloggers, and had I known this when I started my blog in 2018, I probably would have used it to my advantage myself.

In this post, I’ll mostly talk about Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) and how to calculate and implement it in your blog posts.

But before that, I highly recommend that you read my comprehensive guide to blog SEO here.

What is the Keyword Golden Ratio Formula?

It is an indicator of how easy it is to rank your content (a blog post, for example) in search engines that targets that specific keyword.

The significance of the Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) in content creation

The keyword you target for calculating KGR is typically a long-tail keyword (a phrase of 3+ words) that has some amount of search volume (less than 250 is ideal), but not a whole lot of existing content that targets the exact phrase.

Based on the KGR score, you’ll be able to predict whether a specific blog post (or some other type of content) will start ranking fast or not.

This is great for beginner bloggers who have little traffic. If you can write a high-quality blog post using a favorable keyword and rank in as early as a couple of days, then you’ll start receiving some organic traffic to your blog post right away.

If you combine this with your social media and/or Pinterest marketing strategy, then you’ll start building an audience in no time, even if you’re a total beginner.

How to find Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR)

These are the steps to finding Keyword Golden Ratio or KGR.

1. Find a potential, easily-rankable keyword in your niche.
2. Find the monthly search volume of that keyword using a tool like SEMrush. Note that to find KGR, your monthly search volume for the specific keyword cannot be more than 250.
3. Find the number of exact search results for that keyword using an “allintitle” search. I’ll show you exactly how to find it in a minute.
4. Divide the “allintitle” search result number (#3) by the monthly search volume (#2), and you get Keyword Golden Ratio or KGR.

Here’s the mathematical formula:

Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) = Number of the exact search results (Allintitle) for a specific keyword / Monthly search volume for that exact keyword (must not exceed 250)

Use the formula above to calculate your Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR), or you can use the calculator below:

[Note: A free account of SEMrush allows you 10 free searches per day. If you need more, you can always sign up for a paid account. A cheaper alternative is the Mangools keyword finder tool.]

Here’s how to interpret the resulting Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR)

If your KGR is less than 0.25: You have the potential to rank for that keyword in less than 48 hours or so, according to numerous sources.

If your KGR is between 0.25 and 1: Given you’ve written great, unique, and well-structured content, you might be able to start ranking in a few weeks or so.

If your KGR is over 1: It’s a competitive keyword and it’ll take time and many referring backlinks to get it ranked high on Search Engines Result Pages (SERP), i.e., not the best keyword to target as a beginner blogger, at least not for the purpose of ranking on SERP anyway.

[Note: This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t write blog posts that will be hard to rank. Once you start gaining an audience, they may want to know your opinion on popular and hard-to-rank topics. In the end, your main goal is to always serve your existing audience as much as possible. But the KGR should help you get those first set of readers who may convert and become your repeat readers and subscribers, a.k.a., the first group of audience.]

Now, let’s look at how to find a potential candidate for an easily-rankable keyword, then find its search result numbers, and finally, its monthly search volume.

How to Find The Parameters for the Keyword Golder Ratio Formula

So, as I mentioned above, you need three things to use the Keyword Golden Ratio formula. Let’s look at how to find them now.

A little about tools:

A great tool for much of what we’re about to do would be SEMrush. But it’s not cheap and many beginner bloggers do not have the budget for a paid SEMrush subscription. Mangools or Ubersuggest are cheaper options (the latter being the cheapest), but still a sizable investment.

But since I’m writing for beginners (likely on a budget),  I want to show you a step-by-step method that takes zero dollars , using only free tools.

So, we’ll be using the following:

1. Google Keywords Planner: To shortlist potential rankable keywords
2. SEMrush keywords analyzer: To get the exact search volume for shortlisted keywords (the free plan allows 10 searches per day)
3. Google Search: To find the exact search result number for a certain keyword (using “allintitle:”)
4. Optional tool: Answer the Public

It may be best to start a spreadsheet before you start your research. Something like this:

You’ll be going back and forth between keywords and their respective search values, so having a spreadsheet will be useful.

Alternatively, just click the button below to download one that I use myself!

Find easily rankable keywords

We’ll use the Google Keyword Planner for this step.

The problem with this tool is that it doesn’t show us the exact search volume for certain keywords, adding an extra step to our step-by-step method for finding KGR.

If you were to use any of the other paid tools I’ve mentioned above, then you could have researched your keywords and found the exact search volume for each item at the same time.

In any case, if you’re going with the free-everything method, then here’s what you need to do:

• Open your browser, then search for a generic keyword in your niche. Get ideas for what comes up. You can even use Answer the Public for such ideas. Jot down a few keywords that resonate with you.
• Go to Google Keyword Planner and start searching for those keywords, one at a time.
• Keyword Planner will give you some variations of keywords and a rough estimate of monthly search volumes, along with ranking difficulty for each keyword.
• Look for some keywords that make sense (for example, some of the keywords may not form coherent phrases; skip those.)
• Now look for the keyword search volume. Keyword Planner doesn’t show the exact number, unfortunately. But by now we know that our search volume cannot exceed 250 (or else they fall into the more competitive category.) So, ideally, you should pick a few keywords that have 10-100 0r 100-1K searches.
• Make a list of potential keywords (5-10 should do) that you’d like to try out.

For our example, I’ve created a blogger persona. I’m going to assume that this person wishes to make money with a niche topic and Amazon affiliate program (Amazon Associates). With that in mind, maybe they’re looking to write about cheap laptops for a certain demographic—writers, for example.

So, I started with the following keyword: “cheap laptop for writers”

And this is a portion of what Google Keyword Planner showed me:

These all seem pretty good keyword options.

Now, we’ll need to figure out which of these have less than 250 monthly searches.

Find the monthly search volume for keywords

Now we’ll use SEMrush keyword analyzer. You’ll need to open a free account with them.

Once you’ve signed up, go to the dashboard, search for the keywords in your list, one by one, and note their search volume.

Remember: you need keywords with a search volume that doesn’t exceed 250.

Note down the keywords within our specifications.

For example, the screenshot below shows the search volume for one of the keywords in my list: “best budget laptop for writers”

You’ll find this value under the “Volume” column.

For our specific keyword, it turns out the monthly search volume is 210.

SEMrush will show you the specific keyword you’re searching for, and a few relevant ones too. I like to look at those relevant terms in case I might find a better keyword from this list.

Keep adding these data to your spreadsheet.

Find the number of “allintitle” search results for the exact keyword

When you search for something in Google, it shows you all the content it thinks is relevant.

But we want data for content that has the exact keyword in the title of the blog post (or some other type of content).

To do that, we’ll use a little trick: We’ll add “allintitle” followed by a colon (:) followed by our search term in the search field.

So, let’s assume we want to find the number of search results for content that have this exact keyword in the title: “best budget laptop for writers”

So, we’ll type the following in the browser:

And now Google will spit out only the content with the exact phrase in the title, and it’ll also show you exactly how many results are there.

For our example, it turns out there are only 10 search results with the exact keyword.

So, 10 is the allintitle search result number.

Note: If you do back-to-back allintitle searches, you may get an alert like the one you see in the image below. Google will ask you to confirm you’re human. It’s OK. Just click the checkbox and keep going.

Now we have everything we need to calculate KGR for this specific keyword:

Calculate KGR for our example keyword:

Since KGR is less than 0.25, there’s a pretty good chance of ranking when you write a really good blog post targeting this keyword.

How to Write the Blog Post That Targets the Intended Keyword

Writing a good blog post is an art in itself, and unfortunately, beyond the scope of this tutorial.

I’m going to assume you know what makes a useful, helpful, and high-quality blog post. If not, make sure to check out the Blog Writing Workshop.

That said, since we’ll be targeting the specific keyword, I’d like you to do a few things:

1. Add the exact keyword in the title of the post.

For our example, you may consider titles like:

• Why This is the Best Budget Laptop for Writers of All Levels
• The Best Budget Laptop for Writers Who Travel a Lot
• Which is the Best Budget Laptop for Writers? A List of 10 Laptops

Etc.

2. Add the exact keyword in the introduction of your blog post

It doesn’t have to be the first line, just someplace toward the beginning of the post.

3. Add the exact keyword in a couple of headers/subheaders

A couple of your headers or subheaders should utilize the exact keyword in them.

4. Have the exact keyword in the conclusion

Similar to the introduction, make use of this keyword somewhere toward the end of the blog post, or in the concluding paragraph.

5. Use the keyword a few times in the body of the post

Use your common sense. Use the exact keyword where it feels natural to insert it. Don’t force it or it’ll sound unnatural. Google’s search algorithm prefers people-first content, so write for your human readers at all times. Even when you’re targeting a specific keyword.

6. Add the exact keyword in the meta description

Self-hosted WordPress users may use an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO. Using that plugin, you should be able to add a meta description to your blog post. make sure to write a description that has the exact keyword in it.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to write great blog posts, sign up for my upcoming Blog Writing Workshop. You’ll learn a ton of tips and tricks, and I’ll even give you templates that you can follow to a T to write exemplary blog posts.

Can’t we always write blog posts using the Keyword Golden Ratio?

Please don’t!

I’ve said it above as well, but nothing good comes of obsessing with keywords or ranking.

If you always focus on targeting only keywords that can rank easily, you’ll miss out on actual, beneficial content that readers expect from an authority figure in any particular niche.

Sure, as a beginner, you may not be able to rank or drive organic traffic to popular topics, but eventually, your readers will thank you for giving them your insight into these hard-to-rank topics, regardless of however they stumbled into your blog first; whether through one of these easy-to-rank posts or through social media/Pinterest, etc.

Be balanced, always, in your content strategy.

Always write blog posts that your ideal audience needs to know or wants to know, even if you cannot rank with them. You can always utilize Pinterest to drive traffic to those posts. Then, sprinkle in some of these easy-to-rank posts in between writing the more important ones, for more traffic and organic exposure.

Frequently Asked Questions

And that’s it. This should give you plenty to play around with the Keyword Golden Ratio formula and write blog posts that you can rank for easily, and fast!

Thoughts?

Let me know in the comments section below.

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