Is KEI nonsense? Yes.
- SEO |
`KEI is one of many methods to compare a set of keywords to find which keyword may be the easiest to rank for due to less competition but still which can give good return.
How is KEI Calculated
KEI is calculated using two factors.
1. No. of searches made by user for that keyword
2. No. of Competitor pages for that keyword
And the formula for calculating KEI is = (volume of searches per month)^2/(total no. of competitors)
so say for a keyword "best domain registrar", if the total number of searches is 1300 per month as per google keywords tool and the number of google results are 7.7 million then the KEI for the keyword will be (1300)^2/7,700,000 = 0.219 which is very less (ideally you want to go with keywords in the range of 10 to 100) making the keyword not suitable for our SEO campaign.
KEI is just a way of comparing various keywords and is in no way can be called accurate but still its a great way to quickly see which keywords are easier to target and which are not.'
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Now I was reading some great threads about keyword research and competition research last night here on the Warrior Forum (sorry I don't remember the thread url), and I want to quote some paragraphs to show that this KEI formula is nonsense and actually useless. Would you agree?
Quote,`
The real competition is in the top 10 of Google or even the top 5 so largely the rest of them are irrelevant.
Respectfully I disagree that any mere count of number of pages returned for a keyword phrase is an effective gauge of competition. What it can effectively do is falsely convince someone to abandon a potentially profitable niche of keyword because they don't understand their "true" competition. Instead they're relying on misinformation they've been taught too many times without better guidance.
"Oh, this keyword has 846,000 competing pages and this other one only has 97,000 competing pages so obviously the second one is the best one for me to target!"
No, not really.
A low count of these so-called "competitors" in Google deserves no more consideration than one with a higher count.
KW 1: 84,900 "competitors"
KW 2: 176,00 "competitors"
KW 3: 251,000 "competitors"
KW 4: 412,000 "competitors"
KW 5: 629,000 "competitors"
Which do you reject? Which do you pursue? I contend that, when the rubber meets the road, it looks a WHOLE lot more like this:
KW 1: 10 competitors
KW 2: 10 competitors
KW 3: 10 competitors
KW 4: 10 competitors
KW 5: 10 competitors
Focusing much attention at all on raw page counts can sometimes lead people away from potential good keyword phrases. My advice is to focus on the quality of the competition, not the quantity.
Besides, what good is knowing that there are eleventy billion pages indexed by Google for a particular phrase when you can only get 1,000 of them anyway?
The problem is that this singular competition number is a skin deep number and if you are actually wanting to look at factors that are truly relevant, let's talk about:
1. Age of domain - if there are 10+ year old sites on Google for a particular phrase, your 3 month old domain may not stand a chance without some heavy link building.
2. Link popularity - how many links are there pointing in toward a given site and more particularly, a given WEB PAGE. These are two separate and distinct figures and I'm more interested in the latter figure. Then, if I want to dig even deeper to uncover the real truth of the matter, I can dig at the keyword level to find out...
3. Link reputation - this goes a hell of a lot deeper and this actually tells you how many inbound links a site has and what type of keyword phrases are used in the anchor text of a site's various inbound links. If you find a number of web pages ranked in the top 10 for a keyword without an inbound link using the actual keyword phrase, then I would not say the competition is very stiff at all (but you may be going up against an authority site like Wikipedia, ebay, squidoo pages that rank really well).
When it comes down to it and you look at the plain truth in reality when applying the above additional factors, 90% of sites are not optimized and most aren't doing any sort of active link building or even knowing how to create sticky content in Google that attracts natural links to get the kind of quality traffic or conversions a site owner looking for.
So when you consider the 90/10 rule, most of the competition is all up in your head when you are guided by a singular number that is given to you by the great Google, who, in its infinite wisdom is ALWAYS UPDATING. And that's one of the biggest reasons why that one number can't be counted on (and you can throw in there counting on the search count and the number of backlinks).
And yes, need I mention that you really NEVER went to use Google for checking backlinks because they are notorious for withholding valuable backlink information. Yahoo is much more revealing
When you dig deeper instead of just scratching the surface, you truly uncover the weaknesses of the sites in the top 10 and can literally plan an attack to mount the top spot with a reasonably non-complex plan.
Thus, digging deeper at the real roots of what your competition is like can actually be quite inspirational and hope that fuels an interest to never look skin deep again.
My experience tells me that the searching in quotes exercise provides very little in the way of relevant data -- either you can get on the front page of Google or you can't. That means you true "competition" comes down to about 10 individual Web pages.
If you want to know how many/which pages are more or less optimized for your keyword phrase (either intentionally optimized or unintentionally) then search Google for your keyword phrase using the "allintitle" operator. If a page doesn't have the keywords in the title, it fairly likely is NOT optimized for the keyword phrase.
Searching your keyword phrase is quotes is interesting, but not particularly useful.'
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