The importance of doing good keyword research...good for newbies to know

I wanted to make a post about this to hopefully help some of the newer people who are maybe struggling with some of the same things I did early on. Something it took me a long time to learn is the importance of doing proper keyword research before starting a site or jumping into a niche.

One of the biggest mistakes I made early on was not doing proper keyword research before buying a domain or setting up a site. It's super important to make sure that not only is the keyword your trying to rank for a buying term but it's also critical to make sure you can compete. What I always did was just buy a domain that sounded good, buy it, set up a site and then try to do my keyword research. This is completely backwards!

Before you decide to jump into a niche and build a site for it you have to do your keyword research first. You want to find a keyword that it's possible to rank for (low to medium competition) and get a domain that has that keyword in it. Then optimize your site for that keyword and 3-5 related terms and then build back links to those pages with those words in the anchor text. Not the other way around.

Good keyword research can save you hours and hours of your time. Not doing the proper keyword research is one of the biggest reasons so many of my early sites failed. I hope this helps anybody struggling with the same problems so you don't have to go through the same backwards way of learning first.