KEI is the vital term while calculating the value of keyword phrases to target your blogs, websites. It is simply an indicator of how popular a search phrase is and how competitive the market is for this search phrase. The formula is simply stated as (Number of Monthly Searches) squared divided by (Competitor Pages). It’s a simple math equation, but it says a lot about keyword competition for SEO experts, online marketers, and surely bloggers. Let’s investigate the KEI formula further now.

How do we determine the popularity of a keyword?

We simply look at monthly searches on a specific search engine. You can use the Google AdWords keyword tool to determine this value. Many novice keyword researchers think that the most popular keyword is the best option to target. Actually, it’s wrong. The more search means more competition.

So what is the competition in terms of search engines?

Competition is determined by the pages that compete for a key phrase in the search engines. If a general keyword (such as “car loans”) is searched for several hundred thousand times a month in a search engine, you will naturally have several million pages competing to show up on the first page of search engine results. .

Our goal should be to find moderate searches with little to moderate competition. I will give a concrete example. Let’s say keyword phrase A is searched 100 times per month and 10 competitor pages. Another B keyword phrase is 1000 times a month and 100 competitor pages. If we don’t square these terms and just divide; would give the same results for KEI!

Note that according to our KEI (Squared) formula, B is much more logical to aim for. Why? Because 100 times a month is a small number that won’t actually generate much revenue unless it’s a high-priced keyword.

When calculating the KEI, it is wise to look for keyword phrases that are searched for at least 1000 times per month for a serious SEO investment.