Converting Keyword Golden Ratio To The Next Level

[Lloops]

Okay so at the turn of the year I started experimenting with the Keyword Golden Ratio stuff and after a lot of testing, I got some pretty good results.

The problem with this is as I look to target more competitive terms I find that there's some keyword crossover:

So I might currently have a page for "best ballpoint pen for journaling" but if I want to then target "best ballpoint pen" I'm going to have a potential content crossover.

To avoid future issues, I think that there are two options going forward:

1. Continue to create long tail focused pages and when targeting higher traffic/competition pages, set up a brand new page, merge the existing long tail content into the new page and set up a 301.
2. Create the KGR page but set the URL to the mid-level term so the URL for the example above would be "best-ballpoint-pen". Then when starting to focus on the higher traffic/competition term I can just expand the content, tweak the on-page stuff and switch around the internal links.

If anyone has ever played around with this stuff, it would be great to get your feedback.

 

[stackcash]

I don't know what the deal with this KGR stuff is all about, but I'm not sure I'm totally bought-in to the idea. @Ryuzaki and I have talked about it several times and it looks like it's almost impossible to find any long term, juicy terms using that formula. It's all super long tail stuff.

I suppose the idea is to post the content around the KGR keyword, see what that content ranks for, and then go back and optimize for any "bigger" terms that the content ranks for on accident.

This seems like a very reactive approach to SEO. I've seen Doug's "case studies" from his followers that have had "success" with his strategies... but they all seem like very small potatoes to me. I don't mean to turn my nose up towards any type of success.... but getting excited of a site that earns $100-$500 a MONTH isn't really something on my radar.

Okay so at the turn of the year I started experimenting with the Keyword Golden Ratio stuff and after a lot of testing, I got some pretty good results.

The problem with this is as I look to target more competitive terms I find that there's some keyword crossover:

So I might currently have a page for "best ballpoint pen for journaling" but if I want to then target "best ballpoint pen" I'm going to have a potential content crossover.

To avoid future issues, I think that there are two options going forward:

1. Continue to create long tail focused pages and when targeting higher traffic/competition pages, set up a brand new page, merge the existing long tail content into the new page and set up a 301.
2. Create the KGR page but set the URL to the mid-level term so the URL for the example above would be "best-ballpoint-pen". Then when starting to focus on the higher traffic/competition term I can just expand the content, tweak the on-page stuff and switch around the internal links.

If anyone has ever played around with this stuff, it would be great to get your feedback.

To answer your question directly - I don't think you should worry about keyword crossover / cannibalization until you're actually witnessing it in your own data.

Take a look at these examples from colorlib.com, which each target "best wordpress theme" in one way or another:

https://colorlib.com/wp/free-wordpress-themes/
https://colorlib.com/wp/best-personal-blog-wordpress-themes/
https://colorlib.com/wp/wordpress-themes-for-photographers/
https://colorlib.com/wp/wordpress-theme-frameworks/

All of those pages target "best wordpress theme" in their url, title tags, header tags, or body content (or a mix of all 4)... and they're all ranking just fine for their individual target longtails.

So, I don't think, using your example, you have much to worry about if you are truly differentiating the topics through targeted content.

 

[secretagentdad]

Targets fluctuate from serp to serp.

Yes you can make one, but you're going to need a criteria control system. Some information clusters are more density friendly then others.
You can derive them by approuching it like a serp though. Any reasonable crawling architecture can just use what ever page rank variation they're running to localize ratios to word vectors.

 

[Encrypted]

To avoid future issues, I think that there are two options going forward:

1. Continue to create long tail focused pages and when targeting higher traffic/competition pages, set up a brand new page, merge the existing long tail content into the new page and set up a 301.
2. Create the KGR page but set the URL to the mid-level term so the URL for the example above would be "best-ballpoint-pen". Then when starting to focus on the higher traffic/competition term I can just expand the content, tweak the on-page stuff and switch around the internal links.

If anyone has ever played around with this stuff, it would be great to get your feedback.

This is an easy , straight forward decision.

1) Create a big massive guide targeting ALL variations of your keyword both KGR and non KGR (e.g best ballpoint pen , best ballpoint pen for journaling , ballpoint pen for ABC , ballpoint pen for XYZ)

2) Mention your variations in the article.

I do mine this way :

1) Product A - best ballpoint pen

2) Product B - best ballpoint pen for journaling

3) Product B - Ballpoint pen for ABC

4) Product C - Best for XYZ

3) Mention variations of your target keyword in the anchor text when building links to that target page (Both internal and external). THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.

I've had massive success doing this. I'm talking results of this magnitude.

 

[secretagentdad]

And the outing express has left the station.

CHUGA CHUGA CHUGA CHOOO CHOOOOO

Epic thread radar is detecting incoming epicness.

Structured keyword data

Here's a early beta of a tool I've been working on for a while to help with this stuff. Not really planning on ever charging for it. Will clean up the ui eventually sorry its so restrictive.

http://wordmongolian.com

 

[Ryuzaki]

Here's my take on the KGR thing at this point:

• It's good for new sites to start getting traffic sooner than way later. Because there's nearly no competition, you have a chance to actually rank, and since Google is starving for content for those terms you may bypass the sandbox.

• I wouldn't worry about keyword cannibalization, unless you're talking about the homepage (which you should de-optimize for anything that's not brand terms, and even those you don't have to optimize for). Otherwise, hyper-optimize for the one term, since the entire point is to rank for it. You're far better off ranking for one small term (top 3) than "almost-ranking" for 50 small terms.

• If you tuck KGR terms into longer posts optimized for broader terms, your chances to rank for the KGR term are far smaller (under the premise that you're on a newer or weaker site). If you have a big site with massive page rank power, then bundle the KGR terms into the bigger broader posts. But you still may lose those rankings to someone who hyper-optimizes for them.

• Content "crossover" is fine. If you run an authority site with a large number of posts, it's going to happen. If you publish supporting content for money posts (you should), you'll have crossover. I see zero problem with crossover or cannibalization.

 

[secretagentdad]

However you assess difficulty, there's clustering with positive correlation not just dilutions and negative correlations. I think its really just a matter of where is the bottom for ultra long tail keywords you can passively rank for with X or less effort that don't count against your sites mainline keywords.

Some kinda independent observations related to this.
I think Google autocomplete, and voice search like siri and answer services type search engines are increasingly effective at funneling people away from longer tails. This is driving an emergent trend of word clustering allowing new content targets that are now emerging as worth targeting due to automation. It also presents considerable opportunity and might trigger another independent web masters gold rush because emergent trends create less monopolized category's where new entrants can still compete.

 

[Lloops]

Thanks for all the replies, I'm pretty sure that I now get it now.

In a nutshell:

1. No need to worry about keyword cannibalisation, especially for new sites.
2. While the jury is still out on KGR, it's potentially useful for new sites looking to grab those niche terms by going balls-to-the-wall for one term per post
3. When trying to rank for multiple terms on one page, it's useful to use headers and internal links for help

 

[bernard]

This seems like a very reactive approach to SEO. I've seen Doug's "case studies" from his followers that have had "success" with his strategies... but they all seem like very small potatoes to me. I don't mean to turn my nose up towards any type of success.... but getting excited of a site that earns $100-$500 a MONTH isn't really something on my radar.

Sometimes keyword research tools don't return good enough data and sometimes those keywords are far more profitable than you'd think. I rank for such a keyword with '90' searches/month according to Google and thus no competition. It makes about $150 this month. I guess the theory is to find as many as these as you can.

 

[stackcash]

Sometimes keyword research tools don't return good enough data and sometimes those keywords are far more profitable than you'd think. I rank for such a keyword with '90' searches/month according to Google and thus no competition. It makes about $150 this month. I guess the theory is to find as many as these as you can.

I mean, yes, keyword research tools are not always accurate. That's why it's a great idea to cross-reference data across multiple tools.

But, the profitability of any keyword isn't tied to search volume. It depends on the niche, the average conversion rate, the payout amount, etc.

I'd much rather target a super long tail keyword with 100 searches a month that will convert at $1,000 once than a 1,000 search word that converts 5x @ $5.00.