What is a Good KEI? Using Keyword Effectiveness Index the Right Way

Whenever the subject of KEI, or Keyword Effectiveness Index, comes up on Internet Marketing forums, there is one question that invariably asked - "What is a Good KEI?"
I would say, after of course the ubiquitous "What is KEI?" and "What is formula for KEI?" it is the most asked question surrounding the topic of Keyword Effectiveness Index.
To really answer this question completely, we need to first take a look at the components. The simplest KEI formula is Popularity Squared divided by Competition. The two variables in this formula are Popularity and Competition. Just like any mathematical equation, the final answer will vary widely depending on the values that are plugged in for each variable. So, let's take a look at the individual components.

Popularity can be determined in a few ways. For instance, WordTracker returns search numbers as a daily value - for instance, if they return a popularity score of 458, that means the term receives 458 searches per day. The Google AdWords External Keyword Tool, on the other hand, returns data on the amount of searches per month. So, using the example of 458, then the Google tool returning a popularity value of 458 would mean there were 458 searches per month. Which of these variables gets plugged into your formula makes a huge difference in the outcome of the KEI score.

Likewise for Competition. Some people believe the best measure of Competition is the search the keyword phrase in quotes. Other people believe it is to search for the keyword phrase in the title of webpages. These two searches will yield different results, many times separated by thousands. Obviously plugging in those two different variables will, again, yield drastically different KEI scores for a term.

That is the main reason why, in my opinion, it is best to use KEI as a way to quickly sift through the effectiveness of a giant list of keyword data that you, yourself, have accumulated, and to only use that score to compare the terms to others in that same list, or other terms in lists of data that you know are pulling from the same sources.

In other words, use KEI as a comparative measure, but don't toss away an otherwise promising keyword simply because it doesn't have a KEI that measures up to some arbitrary number you've heard on an internet marketing forum somewhere.

If you are doing keyword research, then chances are, you're involved in niche marketing. Are you serious about your niche marketing efforts? How would you like to get one KILLER niche per day delivered to your inbox, FREE of charge, complete with keyword research?

Be Careful in Choosing SEO Web Hosting

Now that you have at last constructed a site, you would like it to be easily reachable to the public. How would you be able to go about achieving this? Most probably someone filled you with the idea of a SEO host organization which is needed to take care of all your requirements. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of getting your website appear within the foremost links of a search engine's results. It is one of the most efficient and essential things that can be done to get your website improved in such a sure way that search engines "reward" you by dispatching extra search traffic your way. It is required for integration of your web design with expansion and internet marketing focused tactics for building of traffic that are essential to the success of your site.

Here, a seo host has the particular principle function of making your website result higher in search engine results once a definite keyword is searched up. A really virtuoso Search engine optimization (SEO) firm will permit an Internet user to locate your site on the starting page of the search engine results page, as a result permitting them to reach your site for the keyed in keywords in the least possible extent of time consumption.

Now you might be assuming that spending on a SEO host corporation will be suitable but, whilst many SEOs could give clients precious assistance, several shady SEOs have given the industry a black name through extremely assertive advertising efforts and their tries to influence search engines wind up in capricious outcomes. Practices that infringe the rules may produce a negative reflection of your internet webpage's occurrence in Google, and may at times trigger the taking out of your site from their index.

Dodge SEOs that give talks about the strength of "free-for-all" links, link acknowledgment methods, or proposing your internet site to 1000's of search engines. These are worthless exercises that don't have any effect on your being placed in the outcome of the foremost search engines - at least, not in a procedure you would likely think about as encouraging.
Google will never ever sell better positioning in their search results, but even then a number of search engines mix pay per click (PPC) effects with their ordinary net search outcomes. A few SEOs promise to grade you very high in search engines, but put you in the advertising section instead of in the search results.

Be on your guard regarding "shadow" domains that seek users from a web page by utilizing fake redirects. These domains frequently will be possessed by the SEO who claims to function on a customer's behalf. But, if the requirement arises, the SEO has the possibility to point the domain to another site, or perhaps to a challenger's domain. If so, you will be paying to build a competing site owned wholly by the same SEO host.

Several SEO hosts promise that they will be able to place you on the first page of a search engine. This is wholly wrong. There is certainly no way any SEO organization can assure a first spot listing. The only thing it maybe means is that they are using a large variety of unlawful practices such as doorway pages filled with keywords referring to the client's site somewhere. Single pages are infrequently pertinent for a high-quality stretch of keywords. More menacing is that these entrance pages frequently contain secret links to the SEO's other clients too. Such entrance pages take away the link recognition of a site and direct it to the SEO and its other customers that might comprise websites with illegal matter.

Traditional PPC Affiliate Programs

Due to the popularity of contextual advertising, webmasters often forget the traditional affiliate programs, some offering similar options as far as paying for clicks instead of sales. If you find a program of this kind in your niche � and you have a page with some traffic � this might be a better option for you. If you place these ads on the right pages, you will be amazed how well they can perform. But, be sure to read the fine print before you send them your traffic, sometimes the PPC option is worse than the revenue share model.

With PPC affiliate programs where the publisher (you) places a link with your affiliate ID embedded to the program, you get paid for every visitor you send. You have total control over you own ads, no script are placing them for you, thus making you in charge of the relevance � or lack there of - of your ads. The price per click is mostly fixed, or in some cases depending on the quantity of visitors delivered, more visitors equal higher rate for every click.
In contextual advertising, the advertisers have the ability to set a max price AND a daily budget, leaving them in total control over their costs. For traditional affiliate programs this isn't an option, they have a set price and static links, delivering traffic around the clock. This is potentially disastrous for any affiliate program, and a problem many affiliate managers solved by use of a required minimum conversion rate to get paid.

When looking at a traditional affiliate program � with a PPC option � you should look closely to see if they have a minimum conversion rate required for your traffic. If you are forced to convert your visitors into sales, and they specify the conversion rate, it's easy math to see if you would be better off with a revenue sharing model. The amount you earn for sending the maximum visitors per sign-up should be greater than the commission for one sale. If it's not, you are guaranteed to make more by the use of another revenue model. If the affiliate program offers recurring commission on their revenue share plan, you should think twice before choosing to get paid per click, you will miss out on all eventual recurring sales and commissions. If you plan on using the affiliate program for a long period of time, you will miss out on more than you can imagine.

Traditional PPC affiliate programs offer a very good opportunity if you have visitors interested in what they are advertising. The ads are usually placed on one, or a few pages where the relevance and click thru rate is high, on other pages you will be better off with other types of programs. Always compare your PPC stats with the revenue from other pages, to see if it really is as lucrative as you'd expect. Many times we get dazzled with the fact we get paid for EVERY visitor, not looking closely enough to see we would make more if we went another direction.
However, if you have a page with high click thru rate, you can make good use of any PPC program in your niche

Top 8 Affiliate Promotional Tools

One of the most challenging tasks for affiliate manager is to keep affiliates motivated. ..and there's no better motivation than a first sale! Less experienced affiliates need full range of tools to promote your products, to be able to experiment and find best converting strategies. What about the big affiliates? Can you imagine a top affiliate doing YOUR homework? No, they won't. So how affiliate promotional tools work and what are they at all?

How it works Affiliate software is (also) used to distribute personalized affiliate codes to affiliates. Thus an affiliate can easily copy/paste promotional materials to their website, blog, email or forum signature.. Personalized links ensure that affiliate gets commission for each sale they refer to you.

Requirements to setup affiliate toolbox There are 3 main types of promotional materials that are supported in most affiliate software packages. They are Text links, HTML banners and Graphical banners. With these 3 categories of promotional codes you can set up a full affiliate toolbox. Before we get to the tools, let's talk a bit about what actually is the aim of affiliate toolbox.

Your affiliates are supposed to pre-sell / recommend your products. The techniques they use to achieve that may vary from one affiliate to another. A product review is a great tool for blogger, while email template is a must for email list owner. You want to have toolbox ready for all types of affiliates and marketing techniques they use. Make it as easy as possible for them to make a first sale. As promised, top 8 affiliate tools follow:

1. Text links - they are flexible, can be placed virtually anywhere. It is easy to customize them as well as weave them into content. A good headline is a must. Give your affiliates a link you know attracts your potential customers. There are ways how to test what headline / text link converts the best. Make a small research - create several links, run an Adwords (or other PPC campaign) campaign and pick the links with best click through.

2. Banner ads - graphical banners may help. Although they do not accomplish the goal of pre-selling and aren't as flexible as text links, together with targeted content and smart placement they can bring nice results. Make sure animated banners convey the advertising message within 3 seconds - otherwise click through rate decreases rapidly. A regards size - maximum suggested size for animated banners is 15kB.

2. Product reviews - write a review of your product. It is a great way to share the expertise about your product you have with your affiliates. It's much easier for them to add meaningful product review on their website or blog. Positive product reviews accomplish the goal of pre-selling very well and increase conversion rate of traffic referred by affiliates to you.

3. Email templates - Email list owners are great affiliates. In fact most super affiliates have huge and responsive lists with relationships build over many years of hard work. Help your affiliates to create mail about your products quickly with pre-written list email announcements. Include also a tell-a-friend email template so that affiliates can spread the word about your product among their contacts.

4. Press releases - the purpose of press releases is to announce a newsworthy message about your organization or product. Press releases are considered by the media (magazines, ezines, news / TV shows, etc.), moreover a good press releases brings a nice traffic and many links across the net. Learn your affiliates to write a good press release to drive traffic to their affiliate sites.

5. Information about PPC advertising - learn your affiliates how to set up PPC campaigns targeted to their affiliate sites. Affiliate sites with good conversion rates thus can bring a constant traffic and income. Do not simply ask your affiliates to pay for your advertising - PPC advertising can be used to promote your products and grow their lists at the same time. Thus your affiliates build their assets while promoting your products.

6. Forum signatures - forums are great to learn, share experience, make JV's or get feedback. Additionally, affiliates can promote your products while receiving all the benefits of forum participation by setting up a forum signature with their affiliate link in it. Signatures are added to each post on forums. Advantage of forum advertising is that it brings targeted traffic with good conversion.

7. PLR articles - share your articles with your affiliates, so that they can quickly build content pages and attract potential customers.

8. Viral e-book - write a free e-book about something that's interesting for your potential customers. Include links to your website and let affiliates to customize them with their affiliate links. Affiliates then distribute the e-book on their websites/ to their lists.

10 Things to Expect from Your SEO Copywriter

From the perspective of a business owner, webmaster, or marketing manager, the change exhibited by the Internet is profoundly exciting, yet profoundly disturbing. The information (and misinformation and disinformation) it offers, the business benefits it promises, and the rules it is governed by change at such a rapid rate that it’s almost impossible to keep up.
These changes have led to a growing appreciation of the value of quality web copy. This appreciation has, in turn, led to an influx of opportunistic ‘copywriters’ promoting themselves as website copywriters or SEO copywriters. Don’t get me wrong, there are quite a few excellent SEO copywriters out there, and you should definitely shop around. The purpose of this article isn’t to scare you; it’s to help you find the SEO copywriter who’ll deliver honest service and excellent results.

So with that in mind, take a look at the following ten tips. These are the things you have a right to expect from anyone wearing a name badge that reads “website copywriter”, “SEO copywriter”, “internet copywriter”, or “web copywriter”… (See also www.divinewrite.com/websitecopywriter.htm and www.divinewrite.com/makethemost.htm.)
1) An understanding of SEO

Obviously, your SEO copywriter must have a solid understanding of the essentials of Search Engine Optimization. They must know that ranking is essentially the result of a website’s relevance (i.e. keywords) and importance (i.e. inbound links). There are a whole lot of other factors involved, but if your SEO copywriter doesn’t understand these two basics, you should look elsewhere. If you’d like to ensure your SEO copywriter knows a little more than just the basics, take a look at www.divinewrite.com/SEOCEO.htm, www.divinewrite.com/seocopy.htm, www.divinewrite.com/seotradesecrets.htm, www.divinewrite.com/webcopyenough.htm, and www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm for some clues as to what you might like to ask in order to assess their knowledge.

2) Proven experience
The proof is, as they say, in the pudding. It’s not enough that your SEO copywriter can talk the talk; they must also be able to walk the walk. Ask to see some examples of websites for which they’ve obtained some good rankings. Note that it may be very difficult to find an SEO copywriter who has actually worked on both keywords and link generation (especially article PR), so if you find one who has, and they write well, snap ‘em up! They’ll have a very broad and useful working knowledge of search engines.

3) An understanding of how many keywords to use
You don’t want to fill every page up with every keyword you’re targeting. This simply dilutes your site’s relevance and reduces readability. Ask your SEO copywriter how many keywords they would recommend targeting on each page. Hopefully they’ll suggest no more than 3, preferably 2. By targeting 2 keyword phrases per page, you can use them a lot without impacting readability.

4) Clear agreement on who will provide keywords
Someone needs to perform a keyword analysis in order to figure out what words you should be trying to rank highly for. Your SEO copywriter should be able to do this for you, but it’s quite often more cost-effective if someone a little closer to the business does it. Either way, make sure your agreement with your SEO copywriter makes it very clear who is performing this task. Don’t assume the SEO copywriter is going to do it, because they may assume you’re going to do it, and then you’ll blow your budget.

5) Keywords or keyword phrases
Expect your SEO copywriter to offer some advice regarding how specific you should be with your keywords. In most industries, the competition for keywords is so fierce that you’ll be forced to target very specific keywords in order to rank – at least at the outset. For instance, if you’re in IT, you probably wouldn’t start out by targeting the keyword “IT”. The competition is immense (at the time of writing, there were approx 3,240,000,000 results for this search in Google.com) and the IT giants already dominate the search engines for this keyword. Instead, try using a more specific keyword phrase like “IT infrastructure consulting new york” (at the time of writing, there were only around 4,000,000 results for this search in Google.com). The other benefit to targeting more specific keyword phrases is that you’ll generate more relevant leads.

6) Agree on word count per page
Always make sure your SEO copywriter gives you an indication of the number of words they expect to write per web page. While it’s necessary to have a decent body of words on most of your web pages, you certainly shouldn’t have too many. What “too many” is all depends on your industry, the objective of the page, and the needs of your audience. It’s always a delicate balance, but it’s certainly possible to rank highly with only 100-200 words per page. So don’t be fooled into paying for copy you don’t need!

7) Density targets & measure
SEO of a web page is NOT guess-work. A good SEO copywriter will talk about density measures. This is a measure of the number of time the keyword phrase appears on the page. It’s expressed as a percentage of the total word count of the page. So if your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10 times, its density is 5%. As a rule of thumb, your SEO copywriter should be aiming for a density of approximately 5% for your primary keyword phrase and 3-5% for your secondary keyword phrase. If your density measures are much higher than this, readability will be reduced, and you’ll risk being perceived as spam by the search engines. Make sure your SEO copywriter understands keyword density, is prepared to state the target density for each keyword phrase, and is also happy to be measured by that standard (should you decide to measure).

8) Where to place keywords
The question of keyword placement has been the subject of much debate amongst SEO copywriters. While it is still unclear how much impact placement has, there is a general consensus that it has SOME impact. Be sure that your copywriter is aware of this impact. Popular opinion has it that keywords are more effective if they appear in headings, bolded text, links, and generally toward the beginning of the page.

9) Some comment on structure & links
Websites are generally better indexed by search engines if their spiders can traverse the entire site using text links. This means your SEO copywriter should be linking each page to every other page using text links. If your site is complex, this may be impractical, so your SEO copywriter will need to create a hierarchical structure for your site. First, they should break your subject material down into categories. Then for each category, they should write a summary page. These summary pages should be accessible from higher level pages via text links. They should also be accessible from each other. Each summary page should link – using text links – to a number of pages discussing the finer details of the category. And each detail page in a particular category should link to every other detail page in that category (once again, using text links). This way the spiders are able to travel from the top of your hierarchy to the bottom, and from left to right across any level.

10) Don’t believe grand promises
SEO copywriters can play a significant role in increasing your search engine ranking. But they can’t do it overnight. By optimizing your site for your target keyword phrases, an SEO copywriter is simply declaring the relevance of your site. If you engage an SEO copywriter to write helpful articles containing a byline with a link back to your site, you can then submit these articles for publication on the Internet, and this will steadily increase your ranking. But if an SEO copywriter tells you they can dramatically increase your ranking in a matter of hours or days, be wary. NOTE: Your SEO copywriter should be able to submit your articles to various submit sites on the Internet. These sites are closely watched by hundreds of thousands of publishers of e-newsletters and article pages from all around the world. High quality articles are quickly snapped up and published prolifically. And each time your article is published, you’ve got another link back to your site, thus increasing the importance of your site (to the search engines).

Conclusion-------------------------------
An SEO copywriter is a valuable addition to your marketing function. But you need to make sure you choose wisely. When you know what questions to ask, the battle is half won.
Happy hunting!