keyword phrase = red widget # times searched = 9,000 # resulting pages = 950,000 KEI = 85.26 KPI = 7.2

keyword phrase = blue widget # times searched = 8,000 # resulting pages = 120,000 KEI = 533.33 KPI = 7.3

keyword phrase = green widget # times searched = 7,900 # resulting pages = 900,000 KEI = 69.34 KPI = 4.2

keyword phrase = yellow widget # times searched = 6,300 # resulting pages = 994,000 KEI = 39.93 KPI = 5

Based on results above you can see that to make it into top 10 search engine results you will be competing with pages that have a *Page Rank averaging 7.3, which is a pretty high *Page Rank. On other hand, if you choose green widgets you will be competing against pages with an average *Page Rank of 4.2. In this case, it would probably make more sense to target "green widgets".

Does this ever happen? YES! It does. While finding keywords for my websites, I discovered this discrepancy in KEI. I thought about keeping it to myself, because it is useful "inside" information. But now that I have a website dedicated to helping beginners with website promotion, I decided I would go ahead and let cat out of bag.

While this new method itself is flawed, it is not bad. Another important calculation that I came up with is what I like to call "anchor backlink quality indicator" (ABQI). To calculate it, you would have to check backlinks of top ten websites for that keyword, and determine number of times a backlink uses keyword in it's anchor text. This will give you a good idea of how many backlinks to page you will need ot be competitive for that given keyword phrase.

One last factor that would be nice to know is Relevancy of websites pointing to top ten pages for given keyword. In other words, how many relevant pages point to top ten pages for given keyword. This could also help in determining quality of competiton.

Ultimately, what should happen is search engines should develop a keyword suggestion tool that gives a competition indicator that uses all of their secret factors to show us SEOs what are best words for us to target. SEO experts would pay lot's of money for this tool and Search Engines could make a pretty penny by providing us with a tool like this. Are you listening *Yahoo, *Google, MSN, anyone?

In conclusion, taking Page Rank into account will help improve your keyword research over KEI. KEI is still valuable, but using it in conjunction with KPI will help greatly in your search for good keywords.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: This example is totally fictional. The numbers given in these examples are fictional.

* Google and Page Rank are trademarks of Google Inc. * Yahoo is a trademark of Yahoo Inc. * Overture is a trademark of Overture Inc. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Choosing Keywords - The Truth about KEI Written by George Manty, owner of http://websitepromotionbook.com

This article can be reproduced in whole or in part, providing this byline is included along with a link to http://websitepromotionbook.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While we will be discussing PageRank (a Google-based term) here same rules generally apply for other engines. The closer a page is in clicks from your homepage, higher value (or PageRank) page is assigned. Basically, if I have a page linked to from my homepage it will be given more weight that a page that is four or five levels deep in my site.

This does not mean that you should link to all of your pages from your homepage. Not only does this diffuse weight of each individual link but it will look incredibly unattractive if your site is significantly large.

Figure out what you main phrases are and which pages will be used to rank for them and be sure to include text links to these internal pages on your homepage. It's important to pick solid pages to target keyword phrases on as you don't want human visitors going to your "terms and conditions" page before they've even seen products.

If that hosting company noted above has a PageRank 6 homepage, pages linked from its homepage will generally be a PageRank 5 (sometimes 4, sometimes 6 depending on weight of 6 for homepage). Regardless, it will be significantly higher that if that page was linked to from a PageRank 3 internal page.

How To Improve Your Internal Linking Structure

There are many methods you can use to improve your internal linking structure. The three main ones are:

1. Text link navigation
2. Footers
3. Inline text links

Text Link Navigation

Most websites include some form of navigation on left hand side. This makes it one of first things read by a search engine spider (read "Table Structures For Top Search Engine Positioning" by Mary Davies for methods on getting your content read before your left hand navigation). If it is one of first things search engine spiders sees when it goes through your site it will have a strong weight added to it so it must be optimized with care.

If you are using text link navigation be sure to include targeted keywords in links. Thankfully this cannot be taken as meaning "cram your keywords into each and every link" because this is your navigation and that would look ridiculous. I've seen sites that try to get main phrase in virtually every link. Not only does this look horrible but it may get your site penalized for spam (especially if links are one after another).

You don't have to get your keywords in every link but if workable, every second or third link works well. Also consider what you are targeting on internal pages. If you homepage target is "web hosting" and you've linked to you homepage in navigation with "web hosting main" which is followed by your contact page so you've used "contact us", it would be a good idea to use anchor text "dedicated hosting" for third link. It reinforces "hosting" relevancy and also attaches relevancy to dedicated hosting page of site to phrase "dedicated hosting" in anchor text.

Footers

Footers are often overused and abused area of websites. While they are useful for getting spiders through your site and other points noted above, they should not be used as spam tools. I've seen in my travels, footers that are longer than content areas of pages from websites linking to every single page in their site from them. Not only does this look bad but it reduces that value of each individual link (which then become 1 out of 200 links rather than 1 out of 10 or 20).

Keep your footers clean, use anchor text well, and link to key internal pages of your website and you will have a well optimized footer. You will also want to include in your footer a link to a sitemap. On this sitemap, link to every page in your site. Here is where you can simply insure that every page gets found. Well worded anchor text is a good rule on your sitemap as well. You may also want to consider a limited description of page on your sitemap. This will give you added verbiage to solidify relevancy of sitemap page to page you are linking to.

Internal Text Links

Internal text links are links placed within content of your work. They were covered in last week's article on content optimization, which gives me a great opportunity to use one as an example.

While debatable, inline text links do appear to be given extra weight as their very nature implies that link is entirely relevant to content of site.

You can read more on this in last week's article.

Final Notes

As noted above, simply changing your internal navigation will not launch your site to top of rankings however it's important to use each and every advantage available to create a solid top ten ranking for your site that will hold it's position.

They will get your pages doing better, they will help get your entire site spidered, they will help increase value of internal pages and they will build relevancy of internal pages to specific keyword phrases.

Even if that's all they do, aren't they worth taking time to do right?

Next Week

Next week in part six of our "Ten Steps To an Optimized Website" series we will be covering importance of human testing. Having a well-ranked website will mean nothing if people can't find their way through it or if it is visually unappealing.