Thread: What is "Keyword Research"?

I understand what the concept of keyword research is - looking up profitable keywords and search trends, writing a blog post or page about it and then ranking #1 for the SERPS. However is this really needed? Can't you just anticipate what people search for and then write content accordingly?

Originally Posted by Ascendancy

Can't you just anticipate what people search for and then write content accordingly?

Sure, if you're omniscient.

I'm not omniscient, so I do research.

I find that people are searching for things I would never have imagined.

Granted, most of those things are either insipid or perverted or both -- but there are always a few usable insights to be found.

Well i guess the net is a lot like the stock market,if you have been around for like 100 years and know what people think and need at each moment...like Big Brother ups i mean Google then you dont have to do research,but if you are a mere mortal like the rest of us around here...then its probably a good idea to do research

it is hard to gamble on keywords just by guessing. You are going to optimize it for a long time then at the end you;ll realize, "oh, this is not the right keyword blah blah...." what a waste of time.

You must know the real figures before you start your optimization routines...

In this post, I listed a variety of ways to utilize SEO to gain traffic for your website or blog.

This is the top of my list: 1. Keyword Research
To help stress the importance, I wrote a tutorial on How to Choose the Right SEO Keywords

As Will mentioned above, just taking a guess on popular keywords is difficult. Plus, you don't know, unless you're omniscient, how many searches a keyword gets, whether or not it's worth covering, if more people are searching for your desired keyword, or a slight variation, etc.

Let's say for example you want to write about dog toys. That's fantastic, but good luck simply targeting 'dog toys' -- You'll need to do heavy keyword research to identify several other less-competitive, high volume, long-tail keywords to work with instead. This is the best way to make a profitable site.

Not to long ago I won the first netbuilders contest, the post inquestion can be found on my blog Keywords – Think Outside the Box | Making Money Blogging - Blog Stew

Kritical Keywords - Think Outside the Box

It pretty much outlines how you can determine the next major keyword buz by keeping ontop of current events for example. You still need to do research that much is Kritical

Agree that you have to do some serious research before starting a new blogging venture.

However, when it comes to domaining as well, sometimes I'd like to take a little gamble. For instance, yesterday I was reading a business magazine article about how 'Bedside Terminals' (a multimedia system for hospital clients) are becoming popular here in my country. The plural .com was taken but I didn't have to think long to decide to register the singular even though the keywords have low search volumes at the moment.