I say that if anyone says that the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) is great to find good keywords/search terms, without explaining any of the drawbacks, then they are either out to cheat you or they just don’t know any better.

Definition: Keyword effectiveness index: A mathematical representation of the popularity of a keyword measured in number of searchers (demand), compared to its popularity measured as the number of pages in a search engines index (supply).

Description: KEI is a statistical formulation that reveals the most effective keyword phrases and terms to use in optimizing your web pages for. Efficiency can be many things. According to KEI, it is efficient to optimize for keywords that have many searchers, but only a few competing pages.

The lower the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition they have. That means that you might have a better chance of getting to the top in the search engines and receive a good number of searchers for your effort.

Example: Suppose the number of searches for a keyword is 821 per day and Google displays 224,234 results (pages) for that keyword. Then the ratio between the popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is:

224,234 divided by 821. In this case, the KEI is 273.

Example on the opposite: Suppose the number of searches for a keyword is 2 per day and Google displays 11,224,234 results (pages) for that keyword. Then the ratio between the popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is:

Explanation: According to the KEI definition, the best keywords are those that have many searches and that don’t have much competition in the search results. A low KEI is therefore preferable.

In our example, it is clear that the keyword with a KEI of 273 sounds as a good keyword to optimized a pages for. It is just as clear, in the example on the opposite, that the keyword that has lots of competitors and a low number of searchers which gives a KEI equal to 5,612,117 is a tough fight for a small prices (unless the two searchers are very valuable;-).

However, the KEI makes no statement about the quality of the competition. While there might only be a few competitors in the search results, these competitors could be big players with big SEO teams and thousands of back links.

The number of search results can’t really tell you whether it is easy to get your web site listed in the top 10 results for that keyword or not. It’s much easier to move your web site from position 20,000 to position 12,000 than from position 190 to position 6.

In addition, the KEI factor is not a scientific number. It is more like a rule of thumb.
We will expect:

• The KEI for a keyword to increase if its popularity increases. Popularity is defined as the number of searchers.
• The KEI for a keyword to decrease if it becomes more competitive. Competitiveness is defined as the number of sites which a search engine e.g. Google displays when you search for that keyword using exact match.

As a general rule, it isn’t advisable to select or deselect keywords wholly on the basis of numbers like KEI.

Keyword statistic has some uncertainties attached. Keywords relevancy has to be the most important factor. Some of your keywords you are able to rank for in the search engines and other will give your users a good experience.

History: There haven’t been many successful metrics that have been calculated by two or more variables. The Keyword effectiveness index has been the most successful.

Future: There is a need for more useful variables in SEO and I predict there will come many in the future.

How to practice: When you have a keyword phrases, with a high, medium or low KEI, you need to be able to answer: Is there a reason why the KEI might be giving an incorrect picture?

There can be many reasons why KEI are showing you something you can’t use. Here are some of the reasons:

1. The position of the words in the keyword phrases is unnatural.
Ex. “keyword report” has 534,000 pages in Google’s index, and the more unnatural “report keyword” has 29,100 pages. This doesn’t mean there is 18 times less competitions for “report keyword”.
2. More words in a keyword phrase means a much smaller changes to find them in a webpage.
3. Search engines don’t give the accurate number of pages in their index.
4. The number of searchers isn’t an accurate number and many times known keywords are inflated by the use of automated tools like webmastergold.

By blindly using KEI to select keywords, you run the risk to select keywords that have words in an unnatural order, long keyword phrases and known highly competitive keywords where it is mostly automated tool that search for them. Not good if you were looking for keyword phrases with little competition and many searchers.

Tips: Always ask yourself if there is a good reason why a keyword phrase has a low number, before you get all excited.

Some keyword phrases convert badly to customers and therefore it is easier to rank for them. Do you want to put a big effort to rank for low value keywords?

Links: Keyword, Keyword Demand, Keyword Phrase.

Conclusion: Use Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) carefully. Is there any reason why KEI shows it is a good keyword to use, but it is not?

Keywords: Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI), Number of pages, SEO, SEM, keyword phrase, keyword tools, keyword popularity, keyword selection, keyword lookup, keyword phrase, Keyword, search term, Key phrase, single keyword, choosing keywords, search engines index, search phrases, keyword list phrases, long keyword phrase, seed keyword list, define keyword phrases.

What is your experience with Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)?
Do you like to use Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)?
Do you have any alternative methods to find good keyword/search phrases?

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Description: The words you type in the search engines to find contents on the internet

Definition: A keyword is a word that can describe content. Used on the internet, it is referred to the words you type in the search engines to find contents on the internet

Example: Keyword, keywords, keyterm, keyphrase, keyword phrase, history of keywords, keyword reasearch, meta keywords, internet keywords, future of keywords, keyword density, keyword analyzing, choosing keywords, best keywords, keywords for websites, popular keywords, meta keywords tag, traffic keyword, good keyword, by keyword, best keyword, search keywords, hidden keywords, most used keywords.

Example on the opposite: Good words look, for with words, used words, how to use words to find things.

Explanation: Assuming that you are trying to find articles like this one, you will have more luck finding this article with the keywords in the Example.

The keywords, in Example on the opposite, are too general to describe anything specific and you are likely to find big web sites on a random subject. The reason is that the keywords, in Example on the opposite, are words used in many websites and not only used in the contents you are looking for.

History: In the beginning, Libraries, search engines and other data bases used a meta tag system where a person decided which keywords describe the book or article. Like the keywords you see for this article in the bottom of the article.

You still find this system in libraries and other closed systems where people that have permission to enter data are thinking of servicing the users and not to promote some products on behalf of other producers.

In the early days the search engines functions in the same way, but web masters began to take advantage of the simple way the search engines were working. They entered keywords that were popular in searchers, but the page contents were about something else, which many times could be monetized.

That meant the breakdown of the search engines 100% bases on keywords at the internet. Search Engines began to apply other method to distinguish good contents from low quality content and contents that were trying to deceive the search engines.

Today search engines consider web page that include all the keywords used for the search and then use many other factors to determine which web pages deliver the best results.

Future: Every time the search engines find another method to sort high from low quality content, there are armies of web masters that try to manipulate the results so they can get more searchers to their site and earn money from them.

One of the things that the search engines are working hard on is to make software that understands the meaning of words in connection to each other. The version is called the semantic web, where the search engines not only understand meaning of word, but also the meaning of a whole chapter.

The search engines will keep come up with ideas to sort out manipulated content. They are getting better sort out spam, but their ability to find long tail keyword phrases efficient needs attentions.

How to control yourself and others: When you write contents for the internet good keywords:
• describe the contents in a few words
• are not used in all subjects, but only used in the contents you are looking for
• are used by many searchers, with little competitions from other websites (if your goal is to attract searchers to your web site)

It is difficult to find the perfect combination of keywords. A way of controlling yourself is to search with the keywords to see if you get the results that are similar to the contents you are trying to describe.

If you are getting the similar result the keywords are probably describing your contents well.

If you are getting results that are different from you content. You have to ask yourself: Are my keywords describing the wrong subject or are the search engine only delivering one meaning of the keywords?
If the search engine only delivers one type of results you might be ably to be the only result that is describing your contents and get a lot of searchers to your site.

How to practice: When you have controlled that you have used the right keywords, then it is time to analyze if you are able to compete with the sites in the search results.

You can do that by three methods:
• Find your own method
• Use a free or paid software to help
• Buy a keyword report

We are biased in the subject of choosing the right method, because we sell keyword reports. The two first methods involved a lot of work and some knowledge to get good results. A quality keyword report gives you overview and save you time.

Having the right keyword-information means that you can target the right searchers in a market where your web site can compete.

Too many who write for the internet, to attract searchers, use too low quality information and it results in a low number of searchers that is not target. It is mostly because the software and the keywords are of too low quality. It is also a lot of work collecting the right information.

When you have targeted the right keywords and written good contents, it is time to measure what has been worked for you and what work has been done unnoticed.

Tips: Copy your success and learn from your mistakes.

When finding keywords for your contents use a source that give you’re an overview of the keywords used by real searchers, tells you the amount of competitions and allowed you to use your time to create contents, not keyword research.

Links:
Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI), Keyword Demand, Keyword Phrase.

Conclusion:: Many peoples that write for the internet are using techniques that were proven to be efficient writing offline communication. One of the ways needed to adapt offline writhing techniques to online is to learn to use keywords.

This site is dedicated to help you improve your keyword technique.

Keywords: Keyword, keywords, keyterm, keyphrase, keyword phrase, history of keywords, keyword reasearch, meta keywords, internet keywords, future of keywords, keyword density, keyword analyzing, choosing keywords, best keywords, keywords for websites, popular keywords, meta keywords tag, traffic keyword, good keyword, by keyword, best keyword, search keywords, hidden keywords, most used keywords.

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Definition: The number of searches for any particular query is referred to as keyword demand. So, although search referrals tell you how many of those searchers clicked through to your site, keyword demand tells you how many searchers used that keyword in total in the search engines. Keyword demand counts the people that chose a result from your site as well as all of those searchers for that keyword who chose to click someone else’s site.

Description: Despite knowing which keywords people use for searching, we consider the demand as the most important information. The sources for the keyword demand aren’t very precise.

Here are the main sources:

Yahoo: Large data base. Very polluted.

WordTracker: Small data base. Polluted.

Keyword Discovery: Unknown data source. Inconsistent results.

Google: Gives demand in a scale. Very polluted.

We have selected Yahoo and WordTracker to be the overall best sources for keyword demand.

Because of the limited information available and the pollution of the results, where automated software search the search engines for information, the search demand isn’t to be taken too literary.

Keyword demand is best used as an indicator then you select the keywords you want to put extra work into getting a god rank in the search engines.

Example:

Figure 1. Keyword demand for the top keywords in the market for loans from our Loan Keyword Report. You can download a free sample report Top 100 Loan Keyword Report here.

Explanation:
Because any keyword demand given isn’t precise, we recommend you use the keyword demand to choose between different keywords instead of seeing it as a precise number.

Keyword demand is almost given in as many different denominations as there are sources. We give the keyword demand as number of searchers world wide per day.

As Figure 1 illustrates there can be big differences between the estimations from the two best sources for keyword demand.
1. Some of the differences can be explained by Yahoo add single and plural form of a keyword together when calculating the search number (ex. mortgage + mortgages = 249 981 searchers per day world wide). WordTracker gives different demand for single and plural form of a keyword.
2. A second part can be explained by the automated software searching for information. An example is the ranking tools that search the search engines for a list of keyword to let the webmaster know where they rank. (I that is) NC done for many keywords, every day, by many websites owner it inflate the keyword demand a lot.
3. A third part can be explained by the search engines served different costumers segments.
4. A fourth part can be explained that searchers use different search engines for different tasks etc.

We have chosen to give the keyword demand as the averages between the two best sources to level out average and mistakes.

History: The history of keyword demand has shown surprising small improvement of technique to collect the keyword demand and increasing pollution of the sources.
There is in the moment no clear source that gives a good and reliable keyword demand.

Future: Many peoples in the online marketing market are trying to find a way to give a more precise keyword demand. The big problem is that information given from the search engines can be used by peoples that want to give information searchers what they are looking for, as well as spammers that try to cheat the search engines to believe they are given good information and earn money on different money screams.

How to control yourself and others: Make a list of keywords you are targeting.

If you are not targeting any keywords in specific, chances are that you could attract more searchers with the same amount of work you are doing now.

If you are targeting top genetic keywords and you are not a leader in your industry online, you will get more searchers if you choose a less competitive part of the market and wait to compete for the most competitive keywords until your website have gained enough authority (links).

Related subject: Keyword Phrases

How to practice: Without information about the keywords searchers are using to find your kind of service or product and the keyword demand, it is difficult to practice. Therefore, we will assume that you have one of ours or a similar keyword reports (download a free keyword report here). There is also other keyword statistic in the report.
Compare the keywords you are targeting with the ones searchers are looking for. Ask yourself if you are pressuring the best strategy? If not then go through your keyword report and find the keywords that are worth targeting.

Tips: Information that helps you targeting the right keywords can increase your efficiency many times.

For very popular keywords, as mortgage, Yahoo gives an overestimated demand and it is therefore better to look at the demand form Wordtracker.

For long tail keyword phrases, as “bad credit foreclosure mortgage refinance stop”, it can be better to look at Yahoo numbers because their database is bigger and not many are looking for their ranking for long tail keyword phrases (less polluted).

Most times it is better to target keywords that lead to a high conversion, than keyword with a high demand.

A different strategy that can be used when you have found a large list of potential keywords that you want to target, is to find a more reliably search demand and the quality of the demand. You do this by marking Ad campaigns in one of the big PPC search engines (Google is properly best). Here you can test the amount of searchers in Google, how many finds your ad so interesting that they click on it and how many and who convert to costumers.
This technique is best used for keyword with massive competitions to avoid spending lots of money on SEO for keywords with little value.

It might also be cost efficient to use ads in PPC search engines if the demand is very low and the cost might be higher to create contents to attract searchers, when the income generated.

Links:Keyword documentation, free top 100 keywords reports and keyword reports review.

Links: Keyword, Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI), Keyword Phrase.

Conclusion: Estimations of keyword demand is based on low quality sources and therefore it is best to use the information as indicators.

Go for high converting keywords instead of keyword with a high demand.

Keywords: Keyword demand, keyword, keyword report, keyword statistic, define keyword demand, keyword research, keyword marketing, choosing keywords, best keywords, top search keywords, keywords for websites, popular keywords, top 100 keywords, free keywords, traffic keywords, good keyword, keyword selection, keyword lookup, keyword discovery, best keyword, free keyword popularity, top keyword list, keyword database, keyword writing for website, choosing the correct keyword, instant keyword research, keyword frequency, keyword ranking

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Definition: A significant phrase in the title, subject headings, contents notes, abstract, or text of a record in an online catalogue or database which can be used as a search term in a free-text search to retrieve all the records containing it.

Description: Key phrase describes a keyword that is made up from more than one word. All terms used in the search engines are referred to as keywords, however, in most instances the keyword is made up of more than one word and therefore is sometimes referred to as a keyword phrase.
Keyword and keyword phrase are used as synonyms, because most searchers use more than one keyword to search.
In Best Practice Marketing we use keyword and keyword phrase as synonyms, where the use of keyword phrase is becoming more and more replaced by keyword.

Example: Best practice using keyword phrase, keyword similar meaning, adsense google keyword, define keyword phrases

Example on the opposite: Keyword, seo, marketing, adsense

Explanation: As illustrated in the example a number of keywords used in combination to search for a subject make a keyword phrase. The opposite is a single keyword.

History: As the search engines index have become bigger and the skills of the searchers have increased the average number of keywords in a keyword phrase have increased.

Figure 1. Number of keywords in a keyword phrases measured in different countries

Source: KeywordDiscovery. Notice that the data are from November 2005. English keyword search statistics include searches done within the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

As illustrated in figure 1 the searchers in the smaller language use shorter keyword phrases. This is because longer keyword phrases result in few or no results. The data are old and the internet and the search engines index have grown since then. Therefore, it is likely that searchers use longer keyword phrase now.

Future: As the search engines index is growing the searchers ability to specify what they are looking for by using lager keyword phrases have to increase.
The introduction of local and personal search will help the searchers to specify their search and their geographic location before they enter any keywords and thereby decrease the size of the keyword phrase.

How to control yourself and others: Try to notice how long keyword phrases you are using and the length of your keyword phrases that gives the best results when you search.

In your websites log files you are able to find the search phrases that searchers are using to find your website. If you are as webmasters are most, you are focusing most on to short keyword phrases and getting searchers with long keyword phrases.

You might ask yourself how I find the long keyword phrases people are using. We only know one way and that is to develop a large seed keyword list and put it into the search engines to get related keyword and keyword phrases that searchers have used. It is a lot of works so please write to Info@BestPracticeMarketing.com if you have found a fast way to gather 10 000+ for your business.

Tips: It makes good sense to target long keyword phrases that exactly search for what you provide. Search engines are building the search results more and more on user interaction. You can therefore get the search engine to send you more searchers if you can get the people to stay in your site longer, bookmark it, buy your product, return to your website, link to it etc.
With todays search engines it is difficult to compete with the big website if you have a small website, because the quality and quantity of link means so much. One of the ways to get the overhand on a big competitor is to work smarter by optimizing for the long keyword phrases that brings the potential costumers that are ready to buy.
If you are a big player and don’t cover long target keyword phrases, then you are asking to be out competed.

Links: Keyword, Keyword Demand, Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI).

Conclusion: Know your keyword phrases then you search and then you optimize your website. Make it your key focus to optimize for long target keyword phrases.

Keywords: keyword phrase, Keyword, search term, Key phrase, single keyword, choosing keywords, search engines index, search phrases, keyword list phrases, How do you use keyword phrases, long keyword phrase, length of most used keywords, seed keyword list, define keyword phrases

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