SEO for Lawyers Part 7 – Keyword Research Formulas

In part six of “SEO for Lawyers: The Attorney’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization for Law Firms” we discussed how to examine your search competitors’ meta keywords tag. In this lesson, we will start discussing a basic method for performing keyword research by first covering the keyword research formulas that will be used in the method. Although the keyword research method that this series will be teaching is time consuming in comparison to some of the automated tools you can buy, it is good to learn basic keyword research the free way before you pay for tools to assist you in it.

Understanding Keyword Research Formulas

There are a number of tools available to help SEOs and web developers to perform keyword research. To date, however, I have not found a single tool which I would completely rely on. Rather, I have chosen to rely on a number of tools when performing my own keyword analysis.

Many keyword research tools will judge keywords based on their popularity and competition using the same popular formulas that this SEO for lawyers series will use and teach. Future lessons in this series, however, will also use the following formulas to help pick keywords for attorneys and assist us in teaching the keyword selection process.

About the Keyword Effectiveness Index

The Keyword Effective Index (KEI) formula is calculated by multiplying keyword popularity times itself and dividing it by its competition. The formula looks something like this: (popularity x popularity)/competition.

The popularity of a keyword will usually be measured by its projected search volume as indicated in the Google Keyword External Tool and other sources. The competition measurement for KEI calculation will typically be acquired by examining the total results returned for a particular keyword search query as indicated in the screenshot below.

If you look at the above screenshot for “accident attorneys chicago,” you will notice that there are 728,000 competing pages in the index for this search. So if we plugged this number into our keyword formula with its corresponding search volume data, we would then know the KEI for this particular search.

It should be noted, however, that when analyzing KEI formula results, the higher the number the better.

KEI is a formula that measures competition but it does not necessarily tell us how tough the competition at the top is, which is why it is not an indicator that one should totally rely upon when determining the merit of a particular keyword or phrase.

The Competition/Popularity Formula

Another popular formula for keyword research is competition/popularity or more simply put results/searches. With this formula, however, the closer a ratio is to zero the better. If a result is under 10 using this formula, it would be considered to be a highly effective keyword. However, it should be noted that most local attorney searches will return numbers much higher than 10 using this formula.

The Keyword Opportunity Index

The Keyword Opportunity Index (KOI) is a formula often attributed to SEO guru David Viney. The equation is similar to the KEI with one major difference. In the KOI, one would replace the “competition” result with the number of directly competing sites.

To do this, one would simply perform a allinanchor:”keyword” search in Google and then record the number of directly competing sites as shown in the example below.

When analyzing KOI results for a phrase, the higher the KOI number is the better. In contrast, if a keyword phrase has a low KOI, the phrase would be considered to have low opportunity value.

KOI is important because it takes into account the competition surrounding a popular keyword phrase which helps you improve your keyword selection. Thus, by taking KOI figures into account, you can target a keyword that is popular but has less competition which works to increase your likelihood of success in an SEO campaign.

Weaknesses with Keyword Popularity Based Formulas

A common problem that exists with analyzing keywords using the above formulas is that the results are typically calculated using “exact phrase” search information. An “exact phrase” search is simply a search where the words are put in quotation marks. However, many people do not do exact phrase searches when searching online.

Another weakness with the formulas is that the total search volume for lawyer searches by location is relatively low in comparison to the high volume searches for which these formulas were initially developed. Thus, most lawyer searches by location will have really low KEI and KOI scores in comparison to a search for a popular product. However, the formulas are still useful if one uses them to measure keyword phrases relative to each other instead of simply focusing on the example numbers that SEO Gurus may quote as good for a particular formula.

Weaknesses with Some Keyword Research Tools

Some costly SEO tools are believed to estimate Google search volumes based on data from less known and somewhat obscure search engines which raises the following question.

How can we expect smaller search engines to accurately reflect keyword data for local attorney searches?

This is one reason why I prefer to perform keyword research manually if time permits using Google direct data. However, even the keyword external tool used for such research has its problems since the tool will also return search result volumes that may be inflated due to searches made by law firms and SEO service providers.

Given all of the above, one should not blindly make decisions based on formula results that are dependent on volume data when deciding whether or not to pursue a particular SEO campaign.

Given that the elements of measurement may be flawed for calculating SEO ratios like the KEI and KOI, one must inevitably conclude that results will be less than perfect. However, despite these shortcomings, I still believe the time invested in keyword research is worth it because it helps you focus your marketing efforts using real data. Without such research, any SEO campaign would be similar to pay and pray advertising.

Stay Tuned for Part 8 of this Series

Practical applications of keyword formulas will be covered in more detail in upcoming posts in this SEO for lawyers series. In the next post of this series, however, we will start performing Keyword Research for an actual attorney search. Click here to subscribe to this series and blog by email using Google Feedburner.