Throwing big words around is often used by consultants to justify the big bucks that they are getting. Let’s say you have a meeting with a client, and you start throwing around acronyms and big words. There is a good chance that you can impress the individual if they are simple enough to get impressed by big words. KEI is one of those words that has been thrown around in the past. It’s true that more folks now know what KEI means, but it’s stil a big word for SEO newbies.

There are many definitions for KEI, but Wordtracker has the best definition for it:

The KEI compares the Count result (number of times a keyword has appeared in our data) with the number of competing web pages to pinpoint exactly which keywords are most effective for your campaign.

Credit to WordTracker for providing KEI for their keywords, but everybody does that now. KEI does look effective on the surface as you can find terms that are less competitive and easy to rank for. The problem is that KEI does not factor in the quality of each search term. For instance, KEI cannot predict if your keyword attracts shoppers, information seekers, or buyers. If you are in business to make a living, you want to convert folks to buyers, but KEI has no way of determining that.

KEI also does not take into account the quality of competition. You might find a keyword that looks effective according to KEI, but if you have 30 Yahoo’s or Google’s in that niche, you pretty much have not much of a chance for getting ranked in the top 30.

In essence, KEI is not a credible metric on its own. It can be helpful if you do your research to figure out the quality of keywords but by its own KEI is just a big empty word. Now, I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t use it. It’s just that it is not accurate enough to build an entire SEO campaign based on KEI numbers, unless you don’t like your job.

Keyword Effectiveness Indicator (KEI) is touted by many professional SEOs as a method to identify the right keywords to get ranked for a page. KEI is essentially based on the number of searches that are done for a term and the number of pages that are indexed for that search term. The higher your KEI, the better the keyword is for your niche. However, there is one major caveat when it comes to KEI. KEI tells you what keywords are easier for you to get ranked for based on the # of competitors and and # of searches. However, that is no how Google rank pages. What if your competitors are Yahoo!, MSN, Wikipedia, Digg, and a bunch of other high quality sites? Is it easy to beat those guys to No. 1 for a search term or is it better to go for a keyword that faces less quality competitors? KEI is a good indicator if you don’t want to go blind in your SEO journey, but by no means is a definite success indicator.