BANS Today

Why KEI Sucks

Written by mbpage on August 15, 2008

When I started to learn search engine optimization one of the suggestions was that you should identify keywords with high KEI.  Is this something you do?  Well perhaps you should reconsider.  KEI is supposed to be a useful indicator of our potential to rank in the serps for a given keyword or keyword phrase yet it has many inherent disadvantages.

Consider this example from my research today “baby”.  Do you think you could rank no. 1 in google for the keyword “baby”?  Not likely, in fact, never in a million years if you’re a one man band yet guess what?  The KEI is 27.98.  I’ve read on many forums that a KEI of more than 1.0 makes a keyword attractive so by those standards this looks a no brainer.

Let’s delve a little deeper though.  If we look at the number of searches we see that there are 159,000 searches a month for the term baby (nice) and the competition is a paltry 901 million!!!!.

So we can see the need to exercise some common sense here.  The competition is way to fierce regardless of the KEI to target this keyword.  What we want is a high number of searches with as low a competition number as we can find.

Take a term like “cat stroller” KEI 27.59, searches 2000 per month, competition 159,000.  In theory this is the kind of term you should be targeting.  From this it is easy to conclude that we need to take all three variables into account when choosing keywords to target.  But there is another problem.

KEI varies according to the data center, keyword program and search engine you obtain the information from - massively.  I targeted a phrase recently where the competition was shown to range from just 400,000 to 7 million, the KEI varied from 0.25 to 75 and the search volume from 2300 per month to 27000 per month depending on where I pulled the data from.

This is the reason KEI sucks and why a good dose of common sense is also needed when evaluating data.  Just try to get the same results I did for the word “Baby” and you’ll see what I mean - you’ve got no chance.

Now I’d love to offer a silver bullet to solve this mess but it simply doesn’t exist.  There is no current solution to this problem and until something comes along we have to rely on common sense and gut feel.  Hardly scientific, but hey, that’s part of the challenge.

In summary then KEI is a useful indicator but no more than that.  You still need to take account of search volume and competition, take the figures with a pinch of salt and test your results.

Get the Most from SEO for Firefox

Written by mbpage on August 14, 2008

There is always something new to learn.  I’ve had the SEO for Firefox installed in my browser for some time and used it periodically but always felt it was a bit of a pain.  Why because it wasn’t set up correctly.  While going through my RSS feeds today I came across a SEO for Firefox video by none other than Aaron Wall.  Check it out, it helped me a lot.

The SEO Swindle

Written by mbpage on July 17, 2008

Sometimes you just need to start with a controversial title. So why “The SEO Swindle”? Well what is the purpose of a link building strategy? To improve your rankings in the serps and build page rank right? The higher your PR the easier it is to exchange links and the higher you rank in the serps.

Well I was looking at a friends site today as I’ve been asked to convert it to a blog. I ran it through several tools including SEO Elite and discovered it had only two backlinks. One from the original developer who has a PR5 site and one from a blogger which is a PR0.

The site in question has no SEO and I mean none. Meta title is the company name, no meta keywords, no meta descriptions - zip, nothing zilch. The only positive is the age of the domain which goes back approx 7 years.

So why do I mention this? Will it has a PR3! A PR3 on a site with just 2 links and no traffic. What this says to me is that PR is awarded simply because of the PR5 link of the web developer. The age of the domain may have something to do with it but I can’t back this up with any evidence.

In conclusion if you want to get a PR value for your site simply get a link from a a high PR site with a small number of links that isn’t a directory or article directory. Am I right or am I right wrong?

US Hosting UK Sites (update)

Written by mbpage on July 11, 2008

In my post US Hosting UK Sites I discussed my realisation that my .com and .net domains targeting the UK were not being indexed in the UK and the plans I had to turn things around. I am pleased to say that these have been successful. The solution was similar to that outlined in my post on .info domains.

If you read that post you will know I use HostGator because of the exceptional value for money they provide compared to the cost of UK hosting. The disadvantage of this is that any domain with the exception of a .co.uk will not easily (if ever) find it’s way into the google.co.uk index. With Googles webmaster tools also failing to sort this out their are only two solutions.

Host country specific sites in the country you are targeting (not as easy as it sounds because in the UK the leading hosting company’s servers are located in Germany) and often expensive e.g. £9.95 per month per domain.

A much better and much cheaper solution is to use HostGator and just buy country specific domains. I bought .co.uk for my UK stores via Godaddy. Moved my existing stores and redirected the old domains as outlined in my previous post and low and behold they appeared between 2-5 days later in the google.co.uk index where they need to be.

Googlebot and .info domains (update)

Written by mbpage on July 9, 2008

In my earlier post Googlebot and .info names for build a niche store I discussed my challenges with getting indexed for one of my stores. After 8 weeks nothing. I’m pleased to say I found the solution. Many of you will be aware of this already but those who may have built many stores and think you’ve wasted your time the way out of the mess is as follows:

Buy a .com or .net domain, move the contents of the .info site to the new folder and then perform a permanent redirect on the .info name to help preserve any links you may have built.

Now this may sound technically complex but it is dead easy if you use HostGator (which is one of the many reasons I recommend them for Build a Niche Store users):

You make a copy the existing domain (.info) folder and rename it to whatever you called your new domain (.com) folder.

You delete the files under the old .info folder (but not the folder) and then go to cpanel add-on domains and redirect the .info to the .com. Don’t forget to back everything up first in case something goes wrong.

As a result of making this change my store was fully indexed in 5 days. Yes it’s going to cost $6.95 for a new .com but you should easily recover that in your first month if you’ve targeted a half decent niche.

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US Hosting UK Sites

Written by mbpage on July 1, 2008

This is a big lesson learned.  When I first decided to use Hostgator to manage my websites I made a number of inquiries about the likely effect on UK targeted BANS stores being hosted in the US.  Everyone assured me all would be fine (I asked questions in a number of forums).  As things have turned out it is not fine.

If you host BANS stores in the US targeting another country then you must use a local domain rather than a .com or a .net.  Why?  Because you will not get in the local google index.  Say I have golfclubs.com a UK store hosted in the US.  Google will not index it in Google.co.uk only Google.com which means more than 95% of UK searchers will never find your site.

To get around this you must either host your .com in the UK (expensive) or buy a .co.uk domain hosted in the US.  Google will then identify it as a UK site and include it in the UK index (so I have read and am about to test).  Now there is an option in Google Webmaster tools to state which country your site is targeting but in my experience this does not work.  All my UK sites are currently indexed in Google.com and not one in Google.co.uk despite setting this flag more than 8 weeks ago in some cases.

So if you want to be found in a specific variant of Googles index either host in that country or buy the correct domain name for that country.  I hope that’s clear.

Finally, the gap between this and my last post is as a result of a  well earned break.  I don’t like to announce these things before I take a vacation and I had hoped to post whilst I was away but I couldn’t get a wireless connection so in the end I decided to just let it be.

Get to the Top of Google

Written by mbpage on June 18, 2008

I have just finished reading Get to the top of Google by David Viney. I had been looking for a SEO book that was bang up to date and this was published early in April. It is actually a very good book, extremely well laid out, logical and pretty easy to understand even for us non-techies. I learned some good stuff particularly with regards to off page optimization and different link building strategies. David lists some great resources and these alone are worth the price of the book. What’s more you even get 6 months free access to Davids SEO Expert forum thrown in. All in all a recommended read.

I’d give it 8 out of 10.