KEI and KOI index: the good, the bad and the ugly

And then do you happen to know what they are good for? My opinion is that you should be extremely careful the use of the two.

Why this is so and what all you need to know about it, I'm going to tell you now.

What is the KEI factor/index?

When I explain to someone what is important in finding out keywords, the list actually always consists of the following four:

• Volume
• Difficulty
• Intention
• Relevance

For each of these four, you have a tool or mindset you can use. For example, when determining volume, you can use a keyword analysis tool such as KWFinder, and when determining intent, you can put yourself in the shoes of your target audience to determine what it means.

You can use the calculation method KEI for difficulty and it stands for Keyword Effectivness Index. It is a tool that determines how difficult it is to rank for the search term based on the volume and all search results (also called SERPs ).

This method actually determines supply and demand in a very simple way. Where the volume is the demand and the number of search results is the supply. And the higher the demand and the lower the supply, the more interesting the keyword becomes.

With a handy example, I'm going to make it concrete:

There is 640 volume per month on the word "keywords" according to KWFinder. For this, see the screenshot below.

Next, we will search Google to see how many parties in Google are using this keyword. We do this by typing allintitle: keywords into Google.

That's 5,980, according to Google.

To then determine the KEI (and thus compare supply and demand), we divide the volume (640) by the number of search results (5,980).

Then you come out a on KEI of 0.11. Then your next question is, "So is that good or bad? That depends entirely on the other keywords that are relevant to your business and where people have a buying intent.

Because it could just be that the other words have a KEI of 0.0005.

What is the KOI factor/index?

The drawback of the KEI is that it does not distinguish between keywords with huge volume and huge competition and keywords with low volume and low competition.

To tackle that problem, you can work with the KOI factor. By simply doing the KEI times the monthly volume, you can calculate the KOI. When you do the KEI times the volume, you determine the popularity of the keyword, so to speak.

Tracking popular keywords with little competition, then, should be easier.

So if we go back for a moment from the keyword I used with the KEI, the math becomes as follows:

Volume (640) : search results (5,980) x volume (640) = 68.49. With the KOI, basically the same applies as with the KEI. The higher the better, but again this depends on the other keywords.

How to use the KEI and KOI in your keyword analysis

Now that the theory is clear, I want to go into practice with you. I'm going to show you exactly how to use the KEI and KOI during your keyword analysis.

Let's start with some keywords that are relevant to Online Marketing Agency and some keywords that are somewhat less relevant:

• Online marketing agency
• Online marketing agency Arnhem
• Online marketing agency Veenendaal
• Online marketing agency Amsterdam
• Online Marketing Agency
• Online marketing agency Ede
• Online marketing

Next, I am going to find out the volumes, the competitors ie the KEI and the KOI:

Now that you have this clear, according to theory, you would be better off making a choice in choosing the best keywords.

If we start looking at the KEI, "online marketing agency Amsterdam" and "online marketing agency Arnhem" are the best choices.

And if I'm going to look at the KOI, "online marketing" and "online marketing agency" are the best choice. As you just noticed, I said that in theory you can make a better choice now.

In theory, yes. Because in practice, it's just a little different.

Why the KEI and KOI are obsolete

Actually, you should renounce the KEI and KOI and ignore them. Yes, they may well be useful calculating tools and give an indication.

But by looking only at volume and the allintitle, you leave out a lot. A lot of things that are much more important than the KEI and KOI. Think about:

• Semantics and synonyms.
• The intent of a keyword.
• The relevance of a keyword.
• Google getting smarter and looking at more and more aspects within SEO. Google is less likely to under garden.
• Other on page elements of competitors, such as load time, meta description and text an sich.
• Authority of competitors.

In addition, there are other reasons why you shouldn't look at the KEI and KOI. After all, it is a lot easier to go from spot 100 to spot 50, than from spot 10 to 1.

With the KEI and KOI, you look at the total number of competitors, not the real competitors who may have been at the top for years and have a rock-solid link profile.

So very dangerous. And another important note is that the volumes given by the Keyword Planner and also my favorite tools like SEMrush and KWFinder are not always accurate.

To close this article properly, let me give a practical example of why the KEI and KOI often don't work:

As you can see, the keyword "Google Analytics" has a KOI of 12,000 and scores many times higher than the first keywords analyzed.

But it is certainly not an interesting keyword to focus on, since these are people who are looking for Google Analytics and not necessarily for my services.

TLDR;

Stop KEI and KOI.