Just Search Labs Just Search Research and Development

In the initial stages of search engine optimisation, good keyword research is essential. It can return better results more quickly and may help your site to establish a niche. We can use tools such as WordTracker to find the number of search for a particular phrase and related phrases. This data is collected from the DogPile search engine and gives the number of expected search based on the historical data.

We should question the accuracy of these data sources as they may results such as automated checking of rankings and spam results which can create results which are artificially inflated.

So we should go for the keyword that has the highest volume of traffic? Not quite. High traffic key phrases are usually extremely competitive. If we pitch our SEO campaign for a highly competitive keyword then we had better have sizeable SEO resources at our disposal.

How can we measure the competition?  What factors are involved in making a key phrase competitive.

Factors from SERPs

Total matches (m₀) – almost no use on its own. There are so many pages for almost any reasonable query. In addition there is a high probability that many unrelated pages will contain keywords in key phrase. Therefore it is included but has only a small weight.

Exact Results (m_exact) – same search query but in quotes. This preserves the order of the words. Slightly more importance on this factor.

InURL Results (m_inurl) total number of results returned when the keyword is searched within quotes after inurl: query modifier. Can over estimate the number of relevant sites.

InAnchor Results (m_inanchor) total number of results returned when the keyword is searched within quotes after inanchor: good matching for specific key phrases as one would hope that links do go to pages related to anchor text. Less reliable as number of words in key phrase decreases.

InTitle matches (m_intitle)Another good indicator, if the title relates to the page. Probably slightly lower importance than inAnchor results.

InText matches (m_intext) intext: searches for the phrase in quotes. Can be a good estimate of keyphrase if the number of words in phrase is greater than two.

The Ranking Page Variables

Ranking Page Links (rp_links) total number of inbound links to the page ranking for a particular keywords. It does not tell you how many of these links have the include the key phrase.

Ranking Page PageRank (rp_PR). Google PageRank of page ranking for a particular keyword – don’t have access to the pageRank maybe able to obtain toolbar PR although this is not accurate.

Ranking Page InTitle (rp_intitle) occurrence of keyword in title of ranking page

Ranking Page InText, H1s, etc. (rp_intext) occurrence of keyword in various HTML tags of ranking page.

The Domain Variables

Ranking Domain Links (rp_links) total number of inbound links to the domain ranking for a particular key phrase, this number is the total number of links and does not include the number of links which the key phrase which is makes this factor less reliable.

Ranking Domain Age (d_age) age of domain ranking for a particular keyword.

Putting this all together, we can write an equation which sums the factors:

Traffic Per Site T(k) = V_T(k) / [ c₀ m₀(k) + c₁ m_exact(k) +  c₂m_inurl(k) + c₃ m_intitle(k) + c₄ m_inanchor(k) + c₅ m_intext(k) + c₆ rp_links(k) + c₇ rp_PR(k) + c₈ rp_intext(k) + c₉ d_links(k) + c₁₀ d_age(k) ]

Σc_j=0..10 = 1

The values of c₀ … c₁₀ are the weighting functions for a weighted average these must add to one. Your ability as an SEO is to develop a set of weights that work for you. However there are some factors which are obviously more important than others.

Sir Pumpkin Longshanks
Programmer, Research and Development