In my last post I introduced something called KEI, which is a measure of keyword efficiency. This week I'd like to write about another efficiency metric that was developed in response to KEI's weaknesses called "KEI3".
While some SEO tools are still only relying on KEI, an SEO tool called WordTracker began incorporating KEI3 at least as far back as 2009 (which was many, many Google algorithm updates ago [1]). KEI3 is calculated by taking the number of searches (and not squaring like KEI does) and dividing it by the number of websites competing for your keyword.
KEI3 = Queries ÷ Competition
Queries = The number of times per day that your keyword is thought to be used as a search.
The number of searches is derived using the same method as KEI.
Competition = The number of sites with your keyword in their incoming hyperlinks and your keyword in their titles.
Instead of using InAnchor to determine the competition for your keyword like KEI does, KEI3 uses the InAnchorAndTitle (IAAT) operator. IAAT works just like InAnchor, but adds InTitle as well. What this means is that it finds pages that each have at least one backlink with your keyword in its anchor text, and which has your keyword in its meta title tag too [2][3].
The main benefit of KEI3 over KEI is that it only counts webpages as competitors if they are at least somewhat optimized for your keyword (indicated by the use of it in their meta title tag), rather than counting pages that just so happen to have the keyword in the anchor text of one or more of their incoming links.
KEI3 shares many of the same weaknesses of KEI, including some not mentioned in the previous post: popularity isn't derived from actual Google data (but from the WordTrcker database, which comes with its own weaknesses), and the traffic volume sample set is pretty small (1% of US search).
A unique disadvantage to KEI3 however, is that keywords with low traffic might look really good, because for keywords with the same traffic-to-competition ratio, KEI3 isn't biased in favor of the keywords with more traffic overall. For example, let's say you are considering keyword A and keyword B. Keyword A has 100 queries and 100 competitors, and keyword B has 1 query and 1 competitor. Both keywords will have the same KEI3. However if you are going to target one or the other, wouldn't you want to target keyword A, since it has more traffic overall? The only reason you might not want to is because the competition is overwhelmingly high. But the point is that you can't tell one way or the other when all you're looking at is KEI3. Your quantification of the efficiency of your candidate keywords neither favors keywords with higher traffic when all else is equal, nor informs you of whether a keyword's traffic is too high simpliciter.
In summary, KEI3 is a measure of a keyword's efficiency with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. Using KEI3 to to determine your keyword targets is better than a shot in the dark, but it is still too simplistic like KEI.
[1] http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
[2] For example, if you were to search "InAnchor:Example+InTitle:Example", Google would return pages to which one or more sites link with the text "example", which also have "example" in their titles. However, it is interesting to note that in WordTracker's case, they actually pull data from the index of a company called Majestic SEO, which correlates highly with Google.
[3] This page explains how WordTracker itself views KEI and KEI3: Finding Profitable Keywords.
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