Keyword Effectiveness Index or KEI is a term which is used to measure the effectiveness of the keywords that your have selected for your SEO campaign. Usually while doing a keyword research the main data we collect will be the search count and the keyword competition. We tend to select keywords with good search count and less competition as it helps us in ranking the keywords much easily.
Keyword Effectiveness Index is actually the ratio of the search count to the keyword competition and higher the KEI, the better your keywords are. For example if the search count for your keyword is 647 and the competition is 31,200, then the keyword effectiveness index for your keyword is 647 divided by 31200, which is .02.
A keyword with high Keyword Effectiveness Index are more popular with less competition and hence easy to rank higher (even though it is easier said than done). There might be other factors that determines how easily you can rank your keywords, but the basic is that a keyword with high KEI is has the potentiality to rank higher.
So while selecting keywords for your website’s SEO activities, it is a good idea to consider keywords having decent keyword effectiveness index. But before finalizing the keywords also have a look at the quality of the keyword competition. If your keyword competition is of high quality then you have to sweat it out to make any impact. So do not blindly rely on the KEI factor and take care to check other factors such as the competitor back links, anchor text of the competitors etc.
Hi George, Thanks for providing such a good insight into keyword effectiveness index. Actually I have never taken care of such thing while conducting keyword research for my sites…Thanks for sharing it…
Welcome @smith… it is really a useful metric and you can really get benefit by using it…