Keyword opportunity index (KOI)

The keyword effectiveness index (KEI), first popularized by Sumantra Roy, is a way of combining keyword popularity (P) with raw keyword competitiveness (C) to give a composite score. The usual formula for KEI is popularity squared, divided by the number of competing sites using that keyword. This gives a higher significance to the popularity measure (which is the right way to look at it).

The KEI measure is often used to rank the effectiveness of different keyword combinations. In your spreadsheet, use Column E (entitled KEI) to calculate the keyword effectiveness of each phrase. The formula in each cell should be P^2/C.

I have developed my own attractiveness measure, the keyword opportunity index (KOI), which takes Sumantra’s work a step further and is a more sophisticated measure of the opportunity presented by each keyword. KOI is calculated as KOI = (P^2/D) and thus bases the attractiveness of a keyword or keyphrase solely on directly competing sites.
Enter the formula P^2/D into each Column F cell of your spreadsheet to calculate KOI. A numerical sort on Column F gives you, in ranking order, a composite rating of the attractiveness of each keyword for an SEO campaign on your business, products, and services. It is this KOI number that I refer to most during the on-page and off-page optimization phases to follow.

Brad’s final keyword analysis spreadsheet contains a staggering 570 phrases. However, for the purposes of illustration I will continue to focus just on the business card category of his analysis. Opposite is a short extract from the finished product.

Brad is delighted with the results. He finds, to his surprise, that the market for online business cards is relatively uncompetitive, with fewer than 400,000 competing pages, chasing 214,000 daily searches. His long-tailed demand curve falls steeply but the competition curve is flat, meaning that Brad has lots of opportunities to make money.

Note the phrase “full color business card printing.” Like our earlier “ski chalet child care” illustration, this is a great example of a phrase that pays. With fewer than 800 competing pages, I share Brad’s confidence that he can achieve a #1 ranking on Google for a search term that more than 400 people search for each and every day. Note, also, how much more effective the KOI comparison is than the KEI score. Would Brad have unearthed the “full color business card printing” phrase without using KOI?

At this point, it is worth injecting a note of caution. Digital Point numbers are extrapolated from a relatively small sample of searches. As such, any search frequency of less than 1,000 can be unreliable. It may be worth running your full analysis over a period of three month ends just to be sure than some overenthusiastic searchers have not skewed the results.

Keywords	Monthly searches	Raw competition	Directly competing	KEI	KOI
Business cards	214,349	245,000,000	365,000	187.53	125,878.07
Business card printing	19,524	42,100,000	36,600	9.05	10,414,93
Business printing	6,345	127,000,000	120,000	0.32	335,49
Online business card printing	1,265	516,000,000	13,300	0.00	120,32
Business card printing services	934	256,000,000	11,800	0.00	73,73
Business card printing service	811	234,000,000	10,400	0.00	63,24
Color business card printing	793	98,500,000	12,300	0.01	51,13
Full color business card printing	426	2,630,000	774	0.07	234,47
Cheap business card printing	215	35,000,000	736	0.00	62,81
Business card printing company	179l	82,000,000	10,100	0.00	3,17