Episode 447: How to Find Low-Competition Keywords That Will Rank a Post Quickly Using the Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) with Dalia Escobar

EBT447 – Dalia Escobar

Intro: Food bloggers, hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom, whether that’s financial, personal, or professional.

I’m Megan Porta and I’ve been a food blogger for over 12 years. I understand how isolating food blogging can be at times. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

I always so appreciate when food bloggers or other entrepreneurs are willing to share secret methods that work really well for them that maybe aren’t necessarily talked about in the greater circles in our space.

I’ve just observed that some people want to hold that information close to them and not share it out of fear that when they share it, they’re going to get less traffic exposure, etc. Dalia Escobar joins me in this episode. She is the blogger over at Meals to Share. She brings a very cool keyword research strategy to the table that when you combine all of the little strategies she uses together, creates magic for her and has created abundant traffic in a really quick amount of time.

I’ve heard of each of these components separately, but I’ve never heard of them being used together. It’s a very simple strategy that I know you’re going to love and try and yeah, just give it a shot. See if it works for your blog. Tune in for the details. You’re going to love this one. It’s episode number 447 sponsored by RankIQ.

Sponsor: Hey, awesome food bloggers. Before we dig into this episode, I have a really quick favor to ask you. Go to your favorite podcast player, go to Eat Blog Talk, and scroll down to the bottom where you see the ratings and review section. Leave Eat Blog Talk a five-star rating if you love this podcast and leave a great review. This will only benefit this podcast. It adds value. I so very much appreciate your efforts with this. Thank you so much for doing this. Okay, now onto the episode.

Megan Porta: After bidding farewell to an engineering career, Dahlia wholeheartedly embraced her blogging dreams and embarked on a new path. Cooking has always been a lifelong passion, which motivated her to open several restaurants, despite not achieving the financial success she had hoped for.

However, this setback served as a catalyst for her transition into the world of blogging. Initially, Dahlia began with a personal finance blog, dedicating three years to learning and refining her skills until finally, she felt confident enough to pursue her true passion and establish a food blog. Dalia, hello! How are you today? 

Dalia Escobar: Hi, Meagan. I’m good. Thank you so much for having me. 

Megan Porta: Yes, thanks for being here. I’m super excited to chat and I’m so curious about your keyword research method. I know nothing about it as of now, but first, we want to know if you have a fun fact to share with us. 

Dalia Escobar: Okay, so that one, I think I have something. I decided to keep blogging with all my effort. So I decided a couple of months ago to go full-time on it. It’s funny how life has a way to test you and say okay, are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure? It’s like testing if you really are into it, no? I’m an engineer. I put all my engineering out of sight. Last week I got certified mail, and I was surprised because I had no idea what it was about. So I had to go to the mail to pick it up. When I got it, it was my seal from a professional engineer. Yes. I found it fun because again, life’s telling me Are you sure that you want to do that? You have this on your hands, are you sure? Something like that. 

Megan Porta: Ah, yes. All those messages life brings us, right? You’re like, wait, what does this mean? Does this mean this? Does this mean that? That’s cool. So you’re an engineer and a food blogger. So which do you find more enjoyable?

Dalia Escobar: I discovered blogging a couple of years ago. It was a chance. I really enjoy it. I like it. And especially food blogging because it’s so creative. I always liked cooking and food blogging. I like it. I enjoy it. I really enjoy it. 

Megan Porta: Creativity is so fun. It never gets boring, right? 

Dalia Escobar: Never. Yes. 

Megan Porta: Never, ever. You’ve really dug into keyword research, which I love. You just, first of all, congratulations on going full-time. That’s amazing. A huge accomplishment in the journey of a food blogger. So nice job with that. You just decided that you were going to do this and make it work, and I’m assuming that keyword research was behind that strategy.

Dalia Escobar: Yes, it was. I started blogging like five years ago. It wasn’t on food. Exactly. I have a personal finance blog and that was my first shot at it. So my first shot at blogging, I always like cooking, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right path for me at the moment. I had my son, and there were too many things going on in my life. I didn’t feel comfortable or ready to take on food blogging at the time. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. You just knew when the moment was right. You knew to dig in. We can all tune in and listen to that. Go ahead and tell us about your blog and kind of a little bit about when you started and Just give us a background. 

Dalia Escobar: I was on maternity leave when it was time to go back to work, the company I was working for called me to tell me that they couldn’t have me back for a couple of months because they were having a financial crisis. So they laid me off temporarily and I didn’t know what to do. At the moment, I needed an income. I had used all my benefits on maternity leave. So I decided, food has always been a passion for me and I dreamt of having a restaurant, so that’s what I did. I used my RRSP money to open a restaurant during that time. It was a couple of months during the summer months. It didn’t work at all. It was a disaster. After that, yes, it was fun. I learned a lot of stuff, but it didn’t work. Then I started Googling what I could do to make money online. Or what else could I do to make money? I found it was a YouTube video about a guy telling me what he would do if he had to start from scratch. He was talking about digital marketing. I thought okay, I think I can do that. I, that’s something I can do. I started studying and something led to others, and I don’t exactly remember how I found out about blogging. All of a sudden I had a website built and learned SEO from I don’t know how many sources, how many books, and how many blogs. When the time came to decide what niche to blog about, I was resentful about cooking in a sense because I had gone through this experience with a restaurant. I was like, Oh no, I don’t want to do that again. It’s a lot of work working in a restaurant and it was huge for me. I don’t want to go that path. So I learned about the things that time makes sense to me. I was looking for a way to make money. So that’s why I started my personal and finance blog. I discovered the keyword method that I’m going to tell you about, during my research, which is the golden keyword ratio. 

Megan Porta: All right. 

Dalia Escobar: Yes. So I found it online. I didn’t invent it. I know it works because that’s what I use. When I discovered it, I tested it and it worked immediately. It worked. My website didn’t have any traffic at all because I was writing about what everybody else was writing. I was going for super competitive keywords. I wasn’t having any traction at all. Then I found this, and the next day, like two weeks after, the first blog I wrote about based on the golden keyword ratio, it was ranked on page one doing that. It was like, okay, I’m after something here, that was my thought at the time. That was really exciting. I have a small support group, of other bloggers. It’s not like others. It’s just a girl and me that we talk on and we share our progress and how we do, how we are doing. Then between her and me, we started doing the research from the keyword and just doing the same thing. It’s working, it works. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. So thank you for just covering your blog. You encountered some frustrations with growth, which I think we all can relate to at some point. We got to the point where we’re like, wait, this isn’t working. We’re not growing as fast as we thought we would or whatever it is. You found this strategy. So that’s so cool. That has to be so rewarding. 

Dalia Escobar: Absolutely. 

Megan Porta: Do you want to talk through your method and just what you do from start to finish? 

Dalia Escobar: Okay, so you have to find a keyword that you want to write about, but then you Google it and submit it to the All Entitled Directive from Google. So All Entitled, and you put the keyword you want to check. The keyword has to have 250 monthly searches or lower. It can be higher than that if you want to really rank super fast for the term. When you put that directive on Google, it’s like allintitle, and the keyword Google will give you the number of pages that are targeting the same keyword. So at the end, how many people are writing or are targeting that keyword that you’re going after. Then the number is divided by the monthly searches. If you get a number like it’s below 0.25, that’s a good keyword to write about. 

Megan Porta: Do you mind if I pause for just a second and ask, okay. So allintitle, is that something you type into the search bar? Do you type, allintitle? How do you find that? 

Dalia Escobar: That’s a Google directive. 

Megan Porta: So when you’re doing the allintitle, what exactly are you typing in? So give us an example maybe for a keyword that you’ve gone after or one you want to go after. What exactly would you type in? 

Dalia Escobar: So for example, if you have the keyword healthy chicken recipes, you type on Google, allintitle, and then the keyword healthy chicken recipes. That will give you a search for how many pages are targeting that keyword that has on their title that is a keyword. If you do that on top, you will see below the search bar you will see a number with a number of pages that are targeting that keyword. You got it?

Megan Porta: I think I’ve done this before, it’s ringing a few bells. Okay. Are there any other characters or anything you have to put in there? Is allintitle just like one word? Do you put any quotations or anything? 

Sponsor: Yeah, no, the quotations, no, but the other ones, the two points, how do you say those? 

Megan Porta: So is allintitle, are there any other characters or? 

Dalia Escobar: Yes. Allintitle, and then the two points. 

Megan Porta: Oh, colon? 

Dalia Escobar: The colon, yeah. 

Megan Porta: Allintitle: without any spaces, space, healthy chicken recipes.

Dalia Escobar: Yes. 

Megan Porta: Okay. Then, what should I see? 

Dalia Escobar: Can you try it? Do you have the computer open? 

Megan Porta: I do. I don’t see a number. Am I missing? 

Dalia Escobar: Yeah, you do. You should see the number, the results, how many pages are… 

Megan Porta: Okay, so it says about 126,000 results. 

Dalia Escobar: Okay, so that’s not a good number at all. 

Megan Porta: Okay, so that’s not a good number, so we want to aim for…

Dalia Escobar: Can you look for a really long keyword that you know? 

Megan Porta: A long keyword that’s going to be a smaller number or… 

Dalia Escobar: Yes. Healthy chicken recipes for picky eaters. 

Megan Porta: Okay, so when I do that, then I see three results. 

Dalia Escobar: Great, so three results. So you divide the three by the search volume of the keyword.

Megan Porta: Okay, and then are you just finding the search volume in KeySearch? 

Dalia Escobar: You can find it in any tool. I usually use Ubersuggest because I have to pay.

Megan Porta: So let’s take that. I’m going to take healthy chicken recipes for picky eaters, and I’m just going to plug it into KeySearch really quick and see what comes up. So the Search volume for that is 20. 

Dalia Escobar: Okay, so you divide 3 by 20. It’s going to give you 0.0 something, no? 

Megan Porta: Okay, so then 3 divided by 20 equals 0.15.

Dalia Escobar: Okay, so that’s perfect because it has to be below 0.25. 

Megan Porta: Okay, so it has to be below 0.25. Okay, now what? 

Dalia Escobar: Now, it’s a method to determine whether you will rank fast or not for a keyword.

Megan Porta: Gotcha. 

Dalia Escobar: Regardless of your domain authority. It’s like Google only has three pages that are targeting that exact keyword so your competition is minimal. I even used that for RankIQ. I even do that for the terms that I have. When I’m going to use a keyword on Rank Q, I also double-check with the golden ratio to make sure, okay, can I rank for this? 

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Megan Porta: So do you ever pick a word that goes above the 0.25? 

Dalia Escobar: No, if it’s not, I won’t. What it may be, like you find something that has more search volume, then, but it’s still, even if it has a lot of volume, I would do the golden keyword ratio. I want to know exactly how much competition I’m dealing with. When you have a domain authority, a low domain authority, when your site is still new, and when you have more authority, you can go after more competitive terms.

Megan Porta: Sure. Okay. Then for that number, when you type in all in title, colon, your keyword, and you see the results, what number again, can you repeat? What number do you try to stay under? 

Dalia Escobar: 0.25. 

Megan Porta: Oh, I meant for them, so when it shows like the search results when you do allintitle? 

Dalia Escobar: Yes. The allintitle, that’s your personal preference, right? Because if you have a big number, your golden keyword ratio is going to be over 0.25. So it’s not going to be a good keyword to go after. 

Megan Porta: So the lower, the better, really. Just use your discretion. Okay. 

Dalia Escobar: You can even use some terms that have zero results and you don’t have to do the calculation there because if there’s no one targeting that keyword, that’s definitely a winner.

Megan Porta: Okay, cool. So if you find something in RankIQ, you even do this method and then If it matches both criteria, you find it RankIQ and it has a good number for the ratio, then you go after it. 

Dalia Escobar: Yes, absolutely. 

Megan Porta: Okay. How often do you find that it doesn’t work or does this work all the time?

Dalia Escobar: Tools are not good for determining exactly. For low-volume searches, the tools are not too specific. When they say, let’s say if a keyword has 10 searches a month or 20 searches a month. They sometimes make mistakes. It doesn’t have any search at all. If the keyword hasn’t any search at all, then it won’t work. It will rank, but if no one is looking for it. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Okay, cool then how long have you been doing this method and how much has your traffic increased? 

Dalia Escobar: Okay my cooking blog is rather new, it’s five months old. Just to give you an idea, I published my blog, the food blog, and I had one post in which I did the golden keyword ratio, the allintitle, because that one was with the allintitle. After two days that I published my blog post, I had 1,000 monthly views with one blog. I remember I was so amazed. I even published it on the RankIQ Facebook group. Because it took me so much by surprise because that changed because it was a mistake I made on a keyword, on a word. I misspelled it. It was a misspelled keyword that had a lot of research. 

Megan Porta: Oh, really? Yes. That’s funny. 

Dalia Escobar: Yes. I changed it back because I didn’t want to after, I don’t know, five years or three years that my blog is that I’ve been working so hard on the blog and then I have a misspell on my blog, I changed it back. So that is proof that it does work. 

Megan Porta: Okay. I love this. I heard about that method and completely forgot about it. When you brought it up, I was like, oh yeah. But when it comes to food blogging and somebody presents a formula, honestly, I get a little bit blocked. No, I don’t want to do math, but it’s really not that difficult. You explained it really well. You just type it into Google, see how many search results there are, and divide that by the search volume and it’s as simple as that.

Dalia Escobar: Yes. My food blog is new. It’s not like the other one. That made a huge difference for me, as soon as I discovered that. But the thing is, in personal finance, it’s a super competitive niche. So if you have a low domain authority blog, people are going to go after your keywords because they find you on AHRef what keywords you’re ranking for or you have in the DA of nine and you’re ranking for terms that have thousands of monthly view, you’re going to have competitors taking your spot away really fast. So that happens to me too. Yes. After that I started publishing posts with weird, super weird terms because they’re not only long tails, but they’re weird. Nobody’s writing about them. Then you find them. Okay, there is a search here. There’s something here. Then they find you and they take you out of page one. Yes. I had a blog, the first one that I wrote about the golden keyword ratio had 7000 monthly views, on the search, on the tools, it said that term had 10 monthly views or something like that. 

Megan Porta: Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I can also see how someone could build this into a strategy where you use this most of the time, but then also try to target some of those higher competition keywords so that you can expand, just expand your portfolio of keywords. I personally have keywords that I know I shouldn’t go after because they’re a little bit out of my reach. But when I do, and then I create a web story, and then the web story creates lift-off for the blog post. You know what I mean? I feel like it’s not out of the question to sprinkle in some higher-competition keywords. 

Dalia Escobar: Yes. But this works better if your domain is new and you need to get traffic right away because you get discouraged when you start writing and writing and you don’t get any traffic at all. But if you’re starting out, you can use this strategy, but at the same time a more competitive term, because you’re going to rank for them eventually because your domain is not going to be low forever. I had a post that I wrote two years ago or something. Right now I got a big bump on my DA for my first site. Now that post, I wrote it on a super competitive term. Now it’s ranking on page one for one of those, in two years. So that’s a long time, no? Because I’m super bad at it, I’m awful at building links. That’s my greatest weakness. 

Megan Porta: We all have great blogging weaknesses to share. Then also you said this was a good strategy for newer bloggers, but I can also see a case for it being a good strategy for more experienced bloggers too, because we’ve got old content just sitting around on the shelves that we can go dust off and really boost the traffic and momentum of our sites by using the strategy on that.

Dalia Escobar: That’s right. Yeah, you’re right. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Is there anything else, any other part of your strategy or any other tips about doing keyword research that you want to mention? 

Dalia Escobar: That’s my main strategy along with RankIQ. I use it to find terms, to find hidden keywords in a niche that you never think about. I also use Google Autocomplete. But that one, it’s when you type a keyword, like a C keyword, and then you start adding and on the front and on the back, you start adding A, C, D, that one. Then I do them, the golden keyword duration. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Okay. So that’s a good tip too. There’s an amazing blogger in my mastermind group who uses Google’s autocomplete strategy. She has been increasing her traffic like mad by doing this. So just go to Google and what was your example? Healthy chicken recipes, right? So if you type in healthy chicken recipes. Then, let’s say, you just start typing something after it, and the first thing I see, it populates for dinner. So you can experiment with what pops up, and then you can also put your cursor before the healthy, and you could do I don’t know, just type in a letter, really. So I typed in B, the best healthy chicken recipe. So for that, there’s still a lot, but if I did the best healthy chicken recipes for dinner, you can just play with that and see what the search results are, but that’s a really effective and easy way to find great keywords, too. So you do that, you do the Google autocomplete method, and then you scope it out in RankIQ and or one of those, and then you do the golden keyword ratio and determine if you’re going to go for it. 

Dalia Escobar: Yes. Absolutely.

Megan Porta: Wow. This is amazing. This is mind-blowing. Thank you, Dalia. Such a simple concept, it’s always good to hear people’s strategies. This is working for you. So we really appreciate this. Is there anything else you want to mention before we start saying goodbye?

Dalia Escobar: That’s it.

Megan Porta: Thank you so much for being here, it was a pleasure to chat with you and I’m so happy to have connected with you just thank you for sharing this. I know that it is sometimes hard when you find something that works to want to share it and I commend you for that. We appreciate you because the more you share, the more you get. Yeah, we just appreciate you for doing that. 

Dalia Escobar: Thank you so much. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today? 

Dalia Escobar: I do have one. It’s from John Lennon and it’s, life is what happens when we are busy making other plans. So be present in the moment and enjoy life and be grateful for it. That’s it. 

Megan Porta: Oh, I love it. Thank you for sharing that. We’ll put together a show notes page for you, Dalia. If you want to go to EatBlogTalk.com/mealstoshare, you can check out Dalia’s amazing site. Tell everyone where they can find you. 

Dalia Escobar: Meals to Share and The Wealth Seeds and that’s pretty much it.

Megan Porta: Awesome. Thanks again for being here, and thank you so much for listening, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Please share this episode with a friend who would benefit from tuning in. I will see you next time.