Keyword Research Over-rated And Over-loved

Every single affiliate marketing guru will tell you keyword research is crucial...And it is but is keyword research over-rated and over-loved?

Keyword research is supposed to help you discover those keywords in your niche that have a lot of demand and a under supplied to. You optimize posts for those keywords and monetize your pages and 'hey presto' you are laughing all the way to the bank.

The theory is sound and I have done my fair share of keyword research. Still do.

But there are a few glitches in this theory

Keyword research tools. Accuracy
The tools currently available give you an estimate of the keyword searches done. I personally use google keyword suggestion tool. Not for accuracy but more for trends. However I am still searching for that keyword tool that gives you the actual numbers of searches done for any term or phrase

How many keywords can you really research
For most niches there are different kinds of keywords. And in each subgroup are a lot of individual keyword phrases that can be monetized. In the really lucrative niches, these keywords can be endless in number. Just try doing keyword research for 'laptops'. You could be drilling down for days. So from the point of view of numbers and using your limited resource, time; judiciously exhaustive keyword research may not be the best way forwards. I am not saying don't do keyword research! Quite the opposite I am saying do effective keyword research

Time investment
Let's face it. Most of us affiliate marketers work alone. So you are probably invested in generating content, getting back links, participating in forums, social networking and all the other things it takes to run a business as an affiliate marketer. And there are only 24 hours in a day. So where on earth are you going to find the time to research the 201 keywords relevant to your niche. It's just ludicrous.

Unpredictable ranking
Finally let's imagine you did go out and do all that extensive and in depth niche research. And found all those amazing keywords that are going to make you a millionaire overnight. The next task is build your content rich web pages and try to get them to rank in the search engines, especially the big G for the keyword term. Problem is with all the other things you are doing.. oh and the keyword research you are performing for your next project, you just cannot make enough time to dedicate to Search engine optimization so that you page appears in the number one position.Certainly not for the 201 or whatever number of keywords it is you discovered

So what am I saying?

Is keyword research a bad thing?

No!!

But there is a better way of going about it than the general ebooks tell us

In a future post discover better keyword research methods