Posted 10 August 2003 - 11:25 AM
Hi Lynn! If no one has welcomed you yet, welcome!
What you are talking about is the KEI formula. It's a great little formula but many of us have discovered that using it exclusively can cause problems.
Good things about KEI is that it's easy to understand, can be generated by computer, often has true gems, and can surprise you with some phrases you would have never thought of.
Bad things are that it IS computer generated, and therefore skips steps that only a human could do (more about that in a sec), and can steer you AWAY from great keywords. Further, the data it uses is historical and therefore not authoritative.
One of the problems with KEI is that it's design tends to eliminate the popular and obvious in favor of the obscure. This is great if you are looking for a niche. But what if you offer services that are common (like website design). Should you avoid using the term on your site in favor of something that has less than 5,080,000 competing sites? Of course not! It's what you do. And getting to the top of the SERPS in a popular keyword is not a bad thing to aim for. Somebody has to be there.
KEI should be the last of 4 steps in keyword analysis. First, describe what you do clearly. Then look at your competitors and see what they are doing (competitors are defined as those taking traffic from you - therefore you only focus on those who are above you or at the top in the search engines for terms). Third, add industry specific terms and jargon, along with some popular terms that are used in conjunction with your product (like colors, new/used, ect). THEN do a KEI to discover anything you've missed up to this point.
If you do this in the wrong order you can find yourself focusing on niches to the point of ignoring what your site is about.
Analysis tools only look at historical data and then try to extrapolate future behavior from it. The lower the initial "P" popularity part of this formula is, the higher the KEI and, unfortunately, the lower the reliability.
Lets say that you found a term with a KEI of 10,000. Great! If you look closely, however, likely there was only one or 2 people doing a couple searches each on the term - maybe (you don't know) in the space of 5 minutes, looking for something on a whim. You, as a designer, see this great KEI and decide to focus a page of your site on it. Not a good idea. In my humble opinion, anything with a popularity of less than 50 per month is more likely to be a statistical glitch than useful information. Maybe that term will never be searched for again. Maybe it was your client trying to find his own website before he finally decided to contact an SEO!
Sometimes people vainly trying to find a site (even their own) that they know is there but isn't listed yet type in all sorts of increasingly desperate search terms. Not a good base from which to develop a business plan or website.
Also, maybe it is easier to get ranked higher if there are only 500 competing sites compared to 5 million. But is there a practical difference between 3 million competing sites and 5 million? Honestly, the only thing that matters in difficulty of ranking is the quality of the SEO in sites in the top 30. This is why you do the competition check before the KEI. It's more important.
My final point is that you really don't know what someone will search on for your service or product in the future. All you know is that it will be somehow related to your service or product. Talk about your service or product both specifically and generally and your site will come up on niche searches that may have never even been done before. The first time someone searches for something, someones website almost always comes up - why not you? Look to the future, not the past.
I'll post a Wordtracker Tutorial that would help with all 4 steps later if you want.
Recap:
1. Describe your product or service, ignoring "keywords" per se That's your basic copy.
2. Visit the top 5 non-paid sites (could be numbers 6-10) and do a competition check. Whats good? What's bad? What keywords are they using? Fill out or edit your basic copy to reflect what you just learned.
3. Check forums, information sites and FAQ's in the subject area and take note of trends and commonly used terms that people who are potential customers use. Fill out or edit your basic copy to reflect what you just learned.
4. Do a KEI and look for niche terms. You can actually skip the KEI and just use Overture or Google to tell you how many times particular niche terms have been used. Make some final adjustments based on this.
I hope this helps rather than confuses.
Wow, it took me so long to write this that serveral other people have posted in the meantime. Oops.
Yours,
Ian
