Is Keyword Research Really That Important?

[Bishop81]

I was reading the the article marketing challenge thread and came on some great advice that I felt needed it's own thread. I know it's been reported time and time again how and why you need to do keyword research. I want to share an example that just happened with me, in an effort to make new people realize just how important it is to research your keywords, rather than just throw up articles and pages related to your subject.

This all came from a site in Hamida's signature. Here's the link: How To Do Basic Keyword Research | Internet Marketing Ramblings

I recently started a non-IM blog with the intent of building it into an authority site, and using it for affiliate marketing. I did the usual keyword research of going into the Google Keyword Tool and pulling out a bunch of keywords that were related to my niche. It's in a huge niche, so I figured it shouldn't be tough to start pulling a little of that traffic my way. By now, I'm getting visitors from a few search results, but not as much as I would have liked. After reading the post from Hamida on her blog, I went through and actually started doing the searches to find the true competition in Google. I never really did this before, because it can take forever doing it manually, and I just wanted to get going.

While doing my research, though, I found a few real gems in the mix, that I would never had thought would be so good. So far, I have 1 long tail keyword that gets an average of 74,000 searches every month. There are only 1,870 people directly competing for that keyword. Another gets 22,000 searches each month, with less than 10,000 sites directly competing for it.

Now I realize how important it is to do your homework and weed out the real winners, instead of just going through the list picking the ones that I though looked good.

Although I know that many, many people have said the exact same thing, it has never really soaked in until now. Thanks, Hamida, for the great post that finally made me take action.

[Steven Wagenheim]

I can see after reading your post that it was a rhetorical question.

Good thing, because I was ready to reply with a, "What are you daft? Of
course it's important."

Thank goodness I didn't have to.

[Bishop81]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

I can see after reading your post that it was a rhetorical question.

Good thing, because I was ready to reply with a, "What are you daft? Of
course it's important."

Thank goodness I didn't have to.

LOL, yes, it's a rhetorical question. I've learned that simply stating the obvious will get your thread viewed a big fat ZERO times. That is, until you're one of the more widely known names around here.

[kenj]

Hi Bishop

I hate it when someone gives away something like this - only kidding

For 2/3 months now I have been checking my keyword research results by checking with google live. I have found similar gems that have been easy to rank for.

Well done - but you should have kept it to yourself

[Bishop81]

Originally Posted by kenj

Hi Bishop

I hate it when someone gives away something like this - only kidding

For 2/3 months now I have been checking my keyword research results by checking with google live. I have found similar gems that have been easy to rank for.

Well done - but you should have kept it to yourself

Hey, it was somebody else that actually wrote concept. In fact, I know for a fact that I've seen it many times on here before. I never really took the time to put in action, though.

I just want to make sure that people realize how important that tedious task of keyword research can really be. It's no secret.

[Cash Blasters Online]

I was going to write up a post about this subject....but....
I decided to keep it short.

You asked are Keywords important?......answer....YES YES YES YES
Hope that helps you..............Yes !!

[Tom Dean]

I just want to make sure that people realize how important that tedious task of keyword research can really be. It's no secret.

It can be tedious but it is important.

I made the mistake of simply using a bunch of keywords for every page of my main site.

Now I keyword research and on page optimize every page of my new sites. It makes a difference.

I do use Market Samurai for research (speeds things up a lot - love it) but the results can be found manually.

Typically I target 100 searches a day with less than 50,000 phrase matched competing sites and get good results.

Seriously I could kick my a** across the country for not setting up some of my main sites properly from the get go.

Came across this tool from a twitter post http://spydermate.com/ very handy for checking out your sites - particularly the "link equity" tab in the top nav bar of your results.

If your going to build a site you might as well take the time to do it right.