- Keywords are not imperative for web pages to rank. However, they are an excellent place to start.
- Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) aims for long-tail keywords that answer intent rather than generic keywords with high traffic volumes.
- When creating your content marketing strategy, the quality of the keywords is ‘key,’ not quantity.
Website owners are often confused about how to use keywords to help their websites rank. SEO (search engine optimization) and SERP (search engine results page) are terms quickly thrown about, including “long-tail keywords” and “searchers’ intent”.
You don’t need to become bogged down by the technical jargon of SEO experts to rank your website correctly. This article aims to facilitate your process by providing you with our perception of the Keyword Golden Ratio – and no, you don’t need to subscribe or pay for this information.
Our findings, our own keyword golden ratio, are the result of training, testing, and experience. Read on to discover exactly how many keywords you need for your content to rank and how many times to input them. (Hint: 1:5)
What are long-tail keywords?
Generic keywords are terms like “sunglasses,” a seed keyword that describes the product or service you are selling. Long-tail keywords respond to searchers’ intent, ranging from “how do sunglasses work” to “best sunglasses for cycling.” Consider being hyper-specific with your keyword strategy when creating content to optimize your website’s search engine performance.
How do long-tail keywords work?
Long-tail keywords align with searchers’ intent. They have less traffic volume but are powerful when aiming to convert leads into buyers. Choosing one long-tail keyword per content piece is a common strategy employed by other SEO experts, including Redefine Marketing Group (RMG).
How they affect site ranking
People who land on your content after typing their search terms are likely to spend more time on your website (if the content is valuable). The algorithm takes this into account. The longer people spend on your website, the higher search engines will place your website on the result page.
Nico Bortoluzzi, SEO Consultant & Director @ SEO LYNX, tells us, “One of the quickest SEO wins are long-tail: those keywords are usually low competition and easy to rank for. Get enough of them indexed over time, and Google will start associating your site with topical authority – that’s when you’ll be able to rank for the harder stuff.”
Keyword Golden Ratio
Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing haven’t written manuals explaining their procedures. They have rules and guidelines. Understanding the keyword golden ratio depends on what type of website you have. We turn to experience and the greater SEO expert community to garner a deeper understanding.
At Redefine Marketing Group, we suggest including your main keyword a minimum of five times. However, we are entirely against keyword stuffing, a practice where website owners try to cheat the algorithm by creating content that becomes illegible due to high keyword repetition.
Derek Flint, Marketing Manager @ Ten Speed and SEO Expert, says, “while I agree with focusing on one keyword, and longtails being easier to rank for, I pretty fundamentally disagree with there being a correct # of times a keyword should be inserted into a piece of content.
Google isn’t a lexical search engine anymore, it’s almost entirely semantic – content can be ranked for a keyword that isn’t even present on the page if search intent is matched/understand entity relationships.”
Flint explains that search intent is more potent than the keywords you choose to help your content rank. Tylor Hermanson, SEO Expert, and Search Engine Journal contributor agrees with this observation, albeit for voice search, “you can find out when Scarlett Johansson’s first album was released from a query that doesn’t include her name or the name of her album.”
Quality content is Queen.
While content is King, quality content is Queen. There is a thick line between writing for the algorithm and humans. While your website needs to rank to appear in front of people, people need to read, understand, and enjoy your content for your website to build topical authority.
- Choose your long-tail keyword (based on your product/service)
- Write descriptive, clear, and concise content that people enjoy reading
- More time the reader stays on your website, the more the algorithm recognizes your website’s authority on the topic
- Searcher types term into the search engine
- Your website ranks high on the search engine result page (SERP)
Long-tail Keyword → Searcher Intent → Quality Content → Page One SERP
Too many or too few?
We’ve briefly discussed using too many keywords. To achieve our keyword golden ratio, we use one long-tail keyword that has to be placed in the piece a minimum of five times. HOWEVER, if the keyword term doesn’t fit in naturally, we don’t force it.
Using keywords effectively
Bogging down your content with keywords will disturb the flow of your piece, making it difficult for readers to digest. Neither is it absolutely necessary to use the keywords exactly as they appear in your research.
For example, if you want to rank for “best sunglasses for cycling,” you can use variations of this phrase and still rank:
- Most popular sunglasses for cycling
- What sunglasses bicycle brands prefer
- Do sunglasses impair your vision while cycling
- What type of sunglasses to wear while biking
To pursue your keyword golden ratio, use long-tail keyword variants in one single article rather than aiming to create a piece for each one. This is known as keyword cannibalization and will only confuse the algorithm, pushing your website ranking down.
Where to find long-tail keywords?
Once you have your seed keyword, it is easier to search for long-tail keywords. You can use paid SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs or the Google search bar and community-led sites like Reddit and Quora.
You enter your seed word, and the tool/engine shows a list of long-term keywords – searcher intent terms.
Software to help write keyword-focused content
Our keyword golden ratio should be able to guide you in writing quality SEO-focused content. If you’re still unsure, you can use paid tools like ClearScope, Yoast, and SurferSEO. These tools advise on how often to use a keyword, if your sentence structure is clear, and tells you your readability score.
You can also reach out to us, Redefine Marketing Group, to help you with your overall SEO content strategy. Ranking your website on page one of SERP is a technical process, time-consuming, but highly beneficial. Our team here at RMG is experienced and dedicated to improving your website’s ranking.
Donna is a freelance Content Growth Specialist with a focus on Off-Page SEO. She’s interested in affiliate marketing and has a passion for reading British Romantic and American Contemporary novels.
