If you are travelling light, the search engine optimisation (SEO) area of your pack deserves an important section. Both these observations remain true as the digital world changes at lightning speed. In a simpler world (if it ever was!), writing quality content and displaying useful pictures, videos and data used to be sufficient to do well in the organic listings of the search engine results pages (the blue links on the right of a SERP). Moreover, too many businesses still think it is all about rankings. While that might still have some relevance for high-commercial-intent, shorttail keywords in search, it can be a fatal misstep in paid search where taking market share and meeting other business goals matters more than ranking in position one. However, there remains a strong correlation between ranking positions and organic traffic, but more on this later. After two decades of managing digital, I can assure you that nothing can be further from the truth, and the complexity of SEO never ceases to amaze me. New signals, new penalties, new interpretations, new relationships between web infrastructure and search intent all emerge at a continuous rate, making search engine marketing (SEM), particularly SEO, a constant headache for many. If you sell something online, there might be nothing more frustrating than setting your campaign in motion only to lose steam part of the way when traffic begins to drop. One area of discrete complexity is keywords.
Understanding the Keyword Tripod Rule: An Overview
The Keyword Tripod Rule is an SEO strategy compass, an idea for organising and prioritising keyword selections to balance three things: The keywords must be Relevant to the content and the audience’ interest. Their Search Volume must be sufficient so that there is sufficient demand to make writing about the topics worthwhile. The Competition must be manageable so it doesn’t become a needlessly expensive game to be a mere also-ran. These three legs form a tripod, providing a stable position by balancing all three criteria. Leave out one, and you fall over.
This rule is important for any content creator, digital marketer or SEO expert to grasp for a very straightforward reason: only by pre-setting all three pillars of the Keyword Tripod in equilibrium can marketers ensure that the keywords they are vying for do what they were meant to do – drive traffic whose mindshare can be converted into sales, while moving confidently up the search-engine rankings. In many ways, the Keyword Tripod Rule will spare you from more generic faux pas, such as keyword cannibalisation (which happens when you target too broad a term, leading to multiple pages on your site competing for the same keywords) or, on the other side of the same coin, being left with a pool of keywords that target so niche a term they will fail to even register on Google’s radars, never mind rank high.
Relevance: Aligning Keywords with User Intent and Content Goals
Relevance is the first of the three legs referred to as the Keyword Tripod Rule. Relevance covers one of the most crucial points: keywords need to relate closely to your content and the intent of your target audience. If they don’t, the searchers you attract will only run away from your page as soon as they land. Your keywords must speak to the subject you’re developing and the search queries users or consumers might be typing into search engines to look for the same subject. Speak their language, and you’re likely to end up with traffic made of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.
Relevance requires investigation and analysis to work out what keywords you need to use To find relevant keywords, you first need to conduct analysis to work out what your audience requires, then investigate what matches that requirement, and, finally, what they will respond to, based on how people have previously searched. Keyword tools such as Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush can help to identify the relevant keywords by searching for existing trends in the information that people are looking for, then tying that back to actual search behaviour. However, relevance is about more than just the keywords; it’s also about the personas, the journey, the need, and the answer at each stage. Those who pursue such relevance not only do well with search engines but also provide great value to the users who pass through, creating a higher quality of interaction, as well as business opportunities, as a result.
Search Volume: Measuring Potential Traffic and Popularity
The second tripod leg is Search Volume, which is the number of times that a keyword is searched for in a given period of time (usually monthly) during a set timeframe, like a week or a quarter. In short, this is very important because keywords with high search volume have the potential to drive a lot of traffic to your website if you rank for them. So although highly searched keywords can be somewhat more competitive, they also tend to bring the most traffic. Low search volume keywords, in contrast, may bring less traffic, but they can be easier to rank for, especially if they are niche terms or long-tail keywords.
There is therefore a balance to be struck between high-volume and low-volume keywords. I know many people who focus solely on targeting high-volume terms, but this tends to mean that their keywords are highly competitive, and they therefore need to go all-in for their websites to get ranked anywhere near the top. I also know people who vastly over-obsess about low-volume keywords, but usually this means that they simply aren’t going to received enough search traffic to get where they want to be. The key is therefore a balanced keyword approach, where one is going after a broad range of both high and low-volume keywords to get the best of both worlds. For example, ensure that your site has a decent pie-chart of overall traffic, without risking ‘missing out’ on scoring some decent positions for terms that are less competitive. Tools such as Ahrefs or Moz will provide this data in its most granular form.
Competition: Assessing the Difficulty of Ranking
Competition: The difficulty of ranking for the keyword. If numerous sites are ranking for a keyword, and/or they have strong SEO, it will likely be more difficult to show up in the top 10 results for that keyword. High-competition keywords do best when there are good search volumes and a wide-appeal subject matter. For more niche keywords, or for local populations, you might be very low competition, and thus get a high ranking with less effort.
When looking at competition for your keyword set, it is important that you analyse which pages currently rank in the top positions. What makes them valuable to rank? This goes into the belief that great content equals a great backlink profile which in turn means a great DA. Further, gaining a grasp on the actual SEO strategies that landed those sites to the top of results pages is grist to your mill in trying to figure out the ‘tricks of the trade’ in your own sector. It is important to note that some tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs that present keyword research as well as competitive analysis have embedded ways of looking at how hard it will be for you to rank for your own chosen keywords. The following table offers an overview on how to balance your keyword strategy: Competition Relevance [High rankings/low relevance = low traffic;low rankings/high relevance = poor user experience] Search Volume [Low search volumes = Less traffic;higher search volumes = more traffic] SEO Purpose [Very competitive keywords could render your messaging less authoritative than desired whilst a niche topic may yield a higher return on your investment]
Balancing the Tripod: Strategic Integration for Optimal Results
The real benefit of the Keyword Tripod Rule is in its balancing act, in how it manages to link Relevance, Search Volume and Competition into a powerful, efficient strategy that can make a big difference to your SEO execution. The ‘balance’ guarantees that you’re targeting keywords that are both relevant to your targets as well as ones that will actually generate meaningful traffic, and that can be sensibly worked for considering the level of competition you’re facing. This is the advantage that distinguishes winning SEO strategies from less consequential ones.
However, a successful balance between the three pillars demands a thoughtful and strategic approach to keyword research and selection. Your starting point is coming up with a long-list of potential keywords. From that list, you will next narrow your options through the evaluation of each keyword for relevance to the content on your site, for search volume, and for competition – followed by the monitoring of its on-going performance over time. Things change and SEO is not a rive once job or solution. It is a process because, one way or the other, you’ll have to tweak your approach to keep yourself in the optimal balance between the three pillars of the Keyword Tripod Rule. The process of SEO allows your strategy to flex according to shifts in the wind of the digital landscape and stand the test of time.
Practical Application: Implementing the Keyword Tripod Rule
Turning the Keyword Tripod Rule into action in the real world of SEO involves the following concrete steps: perform keyword research to find terms that match up with your content goals; your audience intent; and your business goals; gather the relevant data on relevance, search volume, and keyword competition using SEO tools; then put them all in perspective so as to identify those that strike a good balance with respect to all three factors; compile your list of targeted keywords and weave them into your text so as to bring usefulness and readability, but not a jumble of jargon.
Optimisation includes more than integrating your keyword into the content. It also involves on-page and off-page SEO techniques. Make sure your content is structured, with clear headings, meta descriptions and alt texts aligned with the keyword you went with. Build a good backlink profile and work on the technical SEO side as well – for example, make sure your pages load fast and your site is optimised for mobile users. Use analytics tools to monitor how your keywords perform regularly. Polish your strategy along the way, altering your keyword choice depending on what the signals tell you. The KTR rules can change, too: they’re not just a set rule, but a constantly evolving framework that should reflect the changes in your business and in the wider digital world.
Conclusion:
The Keyword Tripod Rule gives you a balanced and well-rounded approach to selecting your keywords, which in turn helps you to succeed in SEO. If you focus on Relevance, Search Volume and Competition, you are likely to choose your keywords in a way that attracts the right sort of traffic, ensures engagement with your audience, and outplays the competition too. The Keyword Tripod Rule helps to decrease the complexity of keyword research and gives you the ability to identify keywords that will help you optimise your content for search engines in a fast and effective manner. In today’s ever-changing digital environment, it remains crucial to be able to manage your Google rankings in a manner that avoids the pitfalls of the keyword research past and updates your presence according to new conditions to ensure continued and improved online visibility over time. Whatever your level of experience, from SEO professional to just starting out, you will benefit from this rule, helping you achieve more lasting and successful SEO.
