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Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)

18 Comments · SEO Encyclopedia

Introduction: Many people new to marketing think that Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) is the magic formula to achieve high ranking in the search engines and thereby secure a steady stream of money. The claim is supported by the documentation of almost all keyword research tools and has been repeated by thousands of inexperienced marketing people.

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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18 Comments so far ↓

  • Keyword

    [...] ← Open letter to the search engines about long tail keyword results Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) [...]

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  • reggy

    Nope,its the opposite,The higher the KEI, 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. It must be above 40.00 and less than 300,000 for competion.

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  • Brian Ostergaard

    Hi Reggy,

    KEI is almost always defined in a special way.

    There is no golden rule when it comes to KEI.

    For most keywords you have a small number of searchers and a big number of websites that is in the index for that keyword.

    I prefers to compare big number instead of very small numbers.

    If you look at the example on the opposite. We get at KEI= 5 612 117. If we define KEI as you suggested we changes the denominator and numerator and get: KEI = 0.000000178.

    It all comes down to: Do you like big or small numbers?

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  • Lance

    I am about to launch just such a new seo variable as you have been talking about. KEI is completely subjective and extrordinarily useless. You can have keywords/phrases with a KEI of .2 and yet to optimize and link build agressively an average person stands a good chance of getting to the first page. That is what KEI can’t tell you. But I will be telling the world in about 30 days from now. Being looking for KCI soon.

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  • sushilver

    this is right…. if you taking higher KEI keywords that means keyword is not much more searcheable and if you come on top from this keyword then what’s the benefit of that.

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  • Kim, Sales Training Specialist

    Agreed Sushilver, KEI Keywords are those that have many searches but don’t have much competition.
    And if you come on top from Higher KEI keywords then what’s the benefit of this?

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  • Vladek

    I believe you should optimize a site for the most common keywords / phrases in its respective field but also use some of high KEI phrases as well. If you combine the both approaches you might end up getting the most of SEO work.

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  • Vi

    I agree with Vladek. You need both approaches to be effective with SEO because if you visit blogs and forum, the topic of KEI are debated on both high and low number.

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  • Sales Training - Management

    Seems to me this article was written for SEM with the number of “keyword” keywords words you’re using. oops, I gave you another one.

    At any rate, I tend to look at where our site is in relationship with our competitors and then look at where we want to be. I have never looked at KEI. What I have done is research my market and learn what the keywords are that are being used in search. Then optimize accordingly. You have to know your market. You need to know where they are. You need to know where and what they are searching for. Don’t guess.

    Always be training.

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  • Carina

    Thank you very much for this interesting post. The KEI is a simple and useful tool, there is no doubt about it. The disadvantage is that it relies on the accuracy of Google statistics. Of course it won’t help anybody to use powerful keywords but not to provide the appropriate content. In this case the keywords will bring traffic AND high bounce rates.

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  • Patrick

    At wordtracker they define KEI as P^2/C.
    P for popularity and C for competitiveness.
    Example:
    adwords 3600 searches (+/- 120 per day)
    google 54300 results
    KEI = 120^2/54300 = 0.265

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  • leonahaha

    yes.
    At wordtracker they define KEI as P^2/C.
    P for popularity and C for competitiveness.
    in fact,how to calculate KEI?
    what’s the standard of KEI? the higher? how high?

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  • Dr. Altaf

    We all, this way or that, use to read lot on KEI.
    Doe sit really work? I found any site that got enough customers to vote will rank high in Google.com, Yahoo.com, Msn.com etc.
    What we must follow? When we check with Google Search, any serch term we get only the pages that word appears. Where do we get the competition number? All,in fact are BS.. DIY what you like.

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  • SEO joe

    This is probably the best KEI article i’ve ever read. Very clear explanation. Thanks

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  • kazanç

    Thanks for the informative article.ı will pay attention to what have been explained in thi article and i expect to get the good result.

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  • katherin

    Thanks for the info, which is the best keyword effectiveness index tool, is there any standard tool to check the keywords for website.

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  • Keyword | Best Practice Marketing

    [...] Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) [...]

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  • QualitySubmissions

    The whole KEI metric is skewed primarily because it doesn’t take into account how competitive page one of Google is.

    A search term could have a lot of results pop up in the index, and still be easier to crack than one with lesser results.

    A real KEI tool needs to take into account how well optimized and strong the first few results in the search engines are in top of the number of results.

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