keywords
How many keywords per month do you actually need?
A quick math guide to picking the right Quibo plan.
The Quibo keyword quota is your monthly budget for new keywords: the ones discovery finds, the ones you add by hand and the ones you import from CSV. Here's how to size it for your goal.
The rule of thumb
You need roughly 5 candidate keywords for every 1 article you ship. Discovery returns more than you'll keep; a typical accept rate is 20 to 30%. Every plan is built on that ratio.
| Articles / mo (target) | Keywords / mo (needed) | Plan that fits | Plan allowance | Research runs / mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 to 20 | Free | 1 article and 20 keywords, for life | 1 (in total) |
| 10 | 40 to 60 | Solo | 10 articles, 50 keywords | 1 |
| 30 | 100 to 200 | Starter | 30 articles, 150 keywords | 1 |
| 75 | 300 to 450 | Growth | 75 articles, 375 keywords | 2 |
| 200 | 800 to 1,200 | Agency | 200 articles, 1,000 keywords | 4 |
| 500 | 2,000 to 3,000 | Business | 500 articles, 2,500 keywords | 4 |
Lifetime tiers run at 4 keywords per article or a little more: 20 keywords for 5 articles on tier 1, 50 for 12 on tier 2, 100 for 25 on tier 3 and 160 for 40 on tier 4. Tiers 1 and 2 include 1 research run a month, tier 3 includes 2, tier 4 includes 4. See Lifetime deal for the full list.
Only new keywords count
The quota counts keywords that are new to your account. A keyword you already have (same text and language, on any of your sites, whatever its status) never uses quota again, whether discovery returns it or you add it again. Archived keywords stay in your account, so picking one again for a new article is free. Deleting a keyword removes it from your account: if it comes back later, it counts as new.
When the quota runs short, discovery adds only as many new keywords as remain, and manual or CSV additions beyond that are skipped with a message. Extra keywords bought from Billing ($0.09 each, on paid plans and lifetime tiers) never expire and are used after the monthly quota.
Sizing a single run
One discovery run returns at most Max keywords this run rows (5 to 60, with a default set from the articles you have left), and only keywords new to your account count. Each plan also includes a fixed number of research runs per cycle (the last column above), so size every run for what you need: a Starter account gets 1 run a month, Growth 2, Agency and Business 4. The run counter resets with your cycle, together with the article and keyword quotas. Manual additions and CSV imports never use a research run, but they do count against the keyword quota when they are new to your account. A run counts only when it adds at least one keyword.
What "used" means for your budget
Keywords already turned into articles are sticky: discovery never suggests them again. That's intentional (no duplicate content, no Google penalty risk), but it means your monthly discovery is cumulative against your goal: a keyword "spent" on an article is not rediscovered. You can still pick it again once it is archived, without using quota.
If you publish 30 articles a month for 12 months, you'll burn through about 360 unique keywords across the year. Starter's 150/month is a comfortable fit; Growth's 375 gives you room to over-research and reject more aggressively.
Why over-researching matters
Only a small share of any discovery batch is worth writing about, and the Gem label only goes to the top quarter of a run by opportunity score that also has a beatable page one. The wider you cast, the better the top of the list looks. vexp.dev, running the same engine, averaged 3.1% Google CTR over six months (152K impressions) by routinely rejecting 60 to 70% of discovered candidates (one site's result, not a guarantee).
Picking your plan
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