Normally, simple KEI is created using the following formula where P is popularity and C is competition:

KEI = P2/C

This will get you in trouble. Not all competitors are the same and looking at just the number of indexed sites using an allintitle operator does not take this into account. For example, a football game against 10 people would seem favorable to a game against 50 people, right? Would you change your mind if you discovered those 50 people were all amputees and the 10 were Olympic athletes?

How can we know the “physical conditioning” of our search competitors without extensive evaluation of each site? I suggest using PR distribution. Take the first 20 results and lookup the PR/MR of each URL (this is easier if you are or know a programmer) and get the average PR/MR value. This should be used in the existing formula in the following fashion where PR is PR/MR:

KEI = P2/(C*PR)

This may skew things a bit, so feel free to tinker with the weight till it meets your liking as in the following example:

KEI = P2/(C(PR*.25))

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 10:54 pm and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.