Why are you wasting time on keyword research?

What you said carries a lot of truth there, but not surprisingly, your post is largely ignored here (this is the WF, after all).

From experience, yes, I can unequivocally say, that making a site about something that you actually know and care about, will get much better results than making a boatload of sites that you know squat all (and could not care less).

A lot of sites on the internet belong in the latter category (unfortunately perhaps).

It is like FOREX sites. Perhaps 99% of the FOREX sites out there, are made by people who either know very little, or next to nothing about it. But then again, FOREX is a high paying keyword.....

And on the other hand, the big boys in FOREX are too busy making money to even bother making a FOREX site - it would be poor use of their time!

Keyword research important part of On-page SEO, And all over depend on keyword research and it's depend what type of website. Anyway minimum 1 hour and maximum 3 hours ...

Keyword research is incredibly important, even in niche's that you're passionate about. You'll have a hard time generating consistent traffic if you're not ranking well in the search engines. And to do that, you need to do your research.

I've always told people who are creating their first site to make sure it's a topic they're passionate about. It's just much easier for them to manage. And they'll have an easier time learning the ropes.

But beyond that I don't see a problem going after niche's that you're not 100% fluent in. Just make sure that they're still quality sites. They don't need to be massive. But the more sites you have, the more you'll earn. (In most cases.)

I agree with your post and you have some good points...The keyword research and competitive analysis is important so you have to know your competition as well to see what you are up against....Before you go to war you have to know what you are against...

WOW Keyword research is like one of the most important things. Targeting a term like blue widget vs. red widget can cost the same amount of money and one can lead to thousands of dollars in profit while the other almost nothing!

buy ugg boots vs ugg boots for sale

Research is good indeed, but I think you are talking about a very different topic here. It is true that if you create a good helpful website that you care about you will make it grow with time and traffic will come in time.

But I don't think there is a waste in time to research keywords, beside you can create a site that you are not really interested in to win a few bucks you could even partner with someone who actually knows and cares. Think of this as you helping a writer for a little cash on the side.

Just saying, but even for good very personal sites, keyword research is a good time investment.

I was never able to get free traffic until I did my due dilligence and researched the keyword competition for my prospective niche, and for me, the Google keyword tool is only a small part of my toolbox. I do agree with you in regards to the fact that if you are passionate about your product or service it will show in your site and your content, which in turn gives the visitors more of what they are looking for and having them stick on your site longer.

It completely depends on what type of business you are running and how you plan to attract customers. For some businesses the keyword research is the MOST IMPORTANT step.

However for others, kw research is not THAT important. However it's quite dumb to disregard it since that because a lot of websites are dependent on their initial keyword pick.

If there's a faster, easier way to rank, people tend to choose that method. I think that's why.

Keyword research is essential in identifying your potential audience and generating a website that has content relevant to what your audience needs. If you can not do keyword research, you can come across the issue of writing content that promotes your web site but doesn't interest the audience. Keywords is an element from the battle because, you need individuals to have a clear idea of what you're offering.

Beth,

You make a lot of good points and I do agree with a lot of them. A lot of the confusion with keyword research comes back to education. There are people claiming to be experts teaching incorrect and misguided information. This puts a newbie into a spin and they don't where to head.

First thing people have to realise is that targeted traffic is the first hurdle for many sites. This can come from all sorts of places but an easy place to start the ball rolling is Google. If you want to use Google for your traffic then you must make sure there is a demand on Google for your niche. If not, you might need to look elsewhere or target a different niche.

Use the Google Keyword Tool (the quickest and easiest tool to generate keyword ideas) and check if your market is using Google to search for info. Come up with a list of subjects you can talk about on your site using authority blogs, magazines, shopping sites, community forums, social networking for generating ideas. Once you have that list you then use the Keyword Tool to make sure there is interest there - through Google.

Using authorities to brainstorm removes the reliance of the keyword tools for coming up with fresh ideas. Often people dismiss a niche because they only have a few initial seed words and the GKWT doesn't let them expand enough. They need to out the tools down and do some market research. Forums are a great place to find new keywords you can then check for traffic numbers in the GKWT.

Once you know the traffic is there you can then make a site with at least some knowledge that the traffic will come if you are good enough and persistant enough. It will also tell you if the target market actually uses Google to find info. Internet Marketing is one example where most of the traffic comes through authority sites and forums rather than Google. Checking IM related keywords would actually alert you that organic traffic won't be the best traffic generator for the site so the whole direction will change.

If your market does have traffic coming from Google you can then use the Keyword Tool to come up with broad ideas for subjects to tackle.

When first starting a site I actually like to target phrases directly so I do the competition analysis on promising keywords. (I simplified my competition analysis so I don't get bogged down by it.) I make content to suit.

This is done so I can get organic traffic coming to the site quickly and with some form of predictability. I select long tail keywords that I know I can rank for with my promotional/backlinking techniques. I personally think this is important for beginners as if they do get it right they can get traffic faster than just writing about a niche in general. It also gives them a clear anchor text goal for their initial backlink creation which unfortunately is still a large requirement for Google rankings.

Keyword density and LSI isn't a concern while writing and is just a distraction for many beginners. As you said, if you write quality content about your subject you will cover all of the relevant lingo without even having to worry. Your primary reason for writing should be to get the reader to perform a desired action; whether this be buy, click, comment, or share.

I keep targeting phrases until the site has built up its authority that new content ranks fairly easily with little extra backlinks. Once it is at this stage I then let my writers run free and write about whatever they like. It is still related content but because the site already has the authority I can sit back and wait for each article's keywords to show themselves. I chuck some backlinks at these emerging terms just to help them along a bit but my focus on keywords pretty much disappears.

Many people do miss the point with organic traffic and they end up spending most of their time on trivial things such as indexing backlinks, keyword density and finding the best keyword tools when that time would be better spend on quality content creation.

I think it is more of a case of remembering the end goal so you don't get caught up on the small things.

(If keyword selection still confuses you then just give it a try. Make some pages for some keywords and see what your results are. You won't know your limits until you test them.)

keyword research is not a waste of time.. not at all/. impoortant for articles sites...

Unless you have thousands of links pointing to your site with proper anchor text...

KW research is 80% of the work. If you can't do KW research properly, you can't rank.

This won't be a problem anymore though.

You're looking at it the wrong way. It doesn't have to be great content vs. keyword research.

With correct and thoroughly done keyword research you can create a great piece of content that also ranks very well and gets you a lot of traffic. Opposed to a great piece of content that is poorly optimised, not getting as much traffic as it deserves.

For someone who is interested in producing great content, I can see how you might think of keyword and SEO as a pretty annoying task, but it's really a necessity if you want to get the most traffic possible.

Great analogy. Keyword research is overated to a great extent. However for conversion purposes and from a custom perspective I buy what I am searching for rather than bump into (such as a banner etc), If i do buy via bumping into something, it has to be really good.

In a nutshell, keyword research is still the number one way to have progress especially for beginners.

Thanks

Mark

hi
Keyword research is the most important part of seo. you don't ignore it...........

Thanks

its hard to determine what google will fall in love with, i find myself creating bulk sites and allowing google to choose the sites it wants to rank and following that, i do this over spending hours researching each niche. In the end yes a researched niche has a better chance but in that time i can build 5 sites and google will likely rank 2. not to mention i will always make some money off of all of the sites which gives me money from flipping the sites that i can immediately leverage right back into my sites that do well.