35 replies to this topic

[DanThies]

Say you are head of the Tanzanian Olympic Committee and your triatholon team never seems to be able to get into the medal rounds.  So you apply the KEI principal and figure out that it is statistically easier to break into the medal rounds for downhil skiing.  :doh:

Good points about KEI, but if there's one African nation with a fighting chance to develop a home-grown downhill ski team, it would be Tanzania, with the majestic Mount Kilimanjaro at least sporting a bit of snow:

Ski Mount Kilimanjaro

[amabaie]

And to think I pulled Tanzania out of a hat! Perhaps Mali would be a better example. <grin>

[Mel]

I often compare the results of keyword research at Wordtracker, Google Adwords and Overture.

I find that the Wordtracker and Adwords often agree on the rough number of monthly searches, and almost always agree on the relative popularity of different keywords.

Overture is another kettle of fish however with the same general trends being apparent regarding the relative popularity of search terms, but the numbers in Overture are much higher and every now and then Overture will report very high figures for terms than neither WT or Adwords seem to find any searches on.

IMO this shows a much higher skew on Overture than WT or Adwords and thus I trust WT and Adwords more.

[ChrisB]

Do not forget that Overture stems, Wordtracker does not, and Google does not. When dealing with plurals this can create quite a skew.

On the topic of KEI -- I find the traditional KEI to be rather worthless. Results returned is not a good measure of competition since you have no way of knowing how many of those results are actually competitive.

For instance search on Google for "1984"

22 million results - way too competitive right?

How many of those results are actually competitive? 10?

What I do is look at the PR of the top results. I know I can beat just about any site on on-page factors so it is just the off-page factors that matter to me. I usually have no problems getting new sites to a PR of 6 rather quickly so if the site's PR is 6 or below I consider the #1 spot attainable. If the site's PR is 7 or above I might go back to the drawing board (unless the site's anchor text isn't even close to keyword rich).

If you're going to do a KEI I think looking at PageRank is a far better way to judge competitiveness.

[seo]

Looksmart Now has a keyword suggestion tools with it's Sponsored Links.

Although the Tool does NOT give amounts, it Does allow for variations of spellings:

WEB SITE - WEBSITE; also

It does appear to list keywords in order of their Popularity.

[DanThies]

Do not forget that Overture stems, Wordtracker does not, and Google does not. When dealing with plurals this can create quite a skew.
...
If you're going to do a KEI I think looking at PageRank is a far better way to judge competitiveness.

Good points on Overture, which also does some pretty loose matching when you're paying for clicks.

I also like to look at PageRank, as a quick estimate of competition. Another good measure is to use "allintitle: search term" to see how many pages have the search term in their title, which is sort of like 'optimization 101.'

"1984" is probably not a worthwhile search term, even if there weren't any competition. Sort of like optimizing for "and."