KEI mispleads webmasters doing keyword research

For a long time, I've been shaking my head at how many SEO specialists, many quite reputable, are still peddling the notion of using KEI to choose the most effective keywords for a website.  This is one of those "lies, damn lies and statistics" things.  Well, now I've blogged about it.

http://www.seo-writer.com/blog/2007/02/23/keyword-competitiveness

Please feel free to respond to these posts here or at my blog...or better yet at both places!

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So your advice is to check what sites link to your competitors?

It is a little late here, and my brain is not working fine

More specifically, I am saying to pay attention only to who is linking to the very top few websites ranking for your a given keyword phrase.  All the other inbound links to all the other websites in the search engine results are just static. They are like people sipping lattes all over the cirty; they are not in your way.

(Their inbound links can be used to find other potential link sources, but they are not relevant for deciding whether a keyword phrase should be pursued.)

I agree in principle to what you are saying. One of my best performing keyword phrases shows almost no activity in ANY of the tools I've tried it on. A recurring odd mismatched hit to one of my sites from Google led me to find it. (If only I could luck into a few more of those.  )

I'm not sure I understand your advice part of the article. If I understand correctly you are saying that the volume of the competition for a keyword is not as important as the ability to spot weakness in the top listed sites for that word/phrase?

If that's what you are referring to, then I have to agree completely. My highest hit getting page of all of my sites is for a very competitive keyword phrase - but most sites that cover it only have a code snippet to use rather than actually explaining anything. So, while many of my competition may have more backlinks - I have more content and have rocketed to the top of the SERPs. 

BTW, you have one paragraph twice. Sorry can't help it - it's the writer in me.

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