The keyword competition indicator (KCI) is a number that helps
determine the competitiveness of a particular search term. The KCI
value can take on any positive number, but most keywords fall in
the range of 3 to 9. The highest KCI we have seen is 26.8 and that
was for the KWP "search engine". The algorithm that calculates
the KCI is not a linear equation based on the raw score, but rather
a nonlinear equation of the form (y=m(x+n)^z), where z>1. From
the equation you can see that incremental increases in the KCI value
indicates exponential increases in the actual competition. For example,
the keyword "snow skiing" has a KCI of 6.0. Comparing
"search engine" and "snow skiing" you will see
that the raw score for "search engine" is 90 times larger
than "snow skiing", meaning theoretically the term is
90x more difficult to get good rankings.
Determining keyword competition is not an exact science and there
is no way to perfectly predict it. This tool looks at a number of
different things to determine the level of competition for a particular
search term. The follow is a list of metrics it uses:
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Number of links shown using link:someurl on Google. |
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Number of links shown using linkdomain:somedomain on Yahoo! |
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Pagerank from Google |
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Allinanchor:keyword search ranking |
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Inanchor:keyword search ranking |
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Number of pages shown using site:somedomain on Google. |
There are also filters in place to help forecast an accurate prediction.
The following are some of the filters that are in place:
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If a big site is listed but they do not show up
in the top 100 in the allinachor listings their score is squashed.
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In general this is an indication that the search
term is not that competitive so the value this site contributes
to the raw score will scew the results and make it seem more
competitive than the term actually is |
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If a site contributes more than 50% of the total
raw score, their score is lowered to the average of all the
other scores. |
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This indicates that one site is inflating the raw score, also
making it seem more competitive than it actually is. |
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If the URL of a site is not the main page of a
site (ie. www.example.com/directory1/index.html instead of www.example.com)
the number of links shown using linkdomain:somedomain on Yahoo!
is not used, insted the number of Google links to that page
is used in the score |
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If a site like Amazon.com has a page with info on blue
widgets, only the links to that page should count, not the
links to the whole Amazon site. |
The end result is a tool that helps you figure out what keywords
are worth your search engine optimization efforts and which are
too competitive for you to go after at this time. If you have any
suggestions/comments/feedback to help make this a better tool please
email the creator. |