Keyword and Niche Research

Keyword research is something that you can do for free. There are several basic tools available that will find lists of keywords for you. They work, but they are quite basic. They can also make finding keywords and profitable niches very time consuming.

It is far better to use a professionally designed piece of software that has been created to do the job both efficiently and effectively.

Not only will you save time, but you'll also uncover profitable keywords and niches that are very hard to discover manually.

Most keyword research tools pull their basic data from Yahoo's system (formerly known as Overture) and this can, at times cause problems. In January 2007 Yahoo announced that they would no longer update or support their keyword system - a move that threw the Internet marketing industry into a spin!

Although I'm not aware of any specific announcements, Yahoo do seem to have started to support their tool again and so the major third-party programs are working fine.

My communications with the owners of the two keyword tools that I recommend here confirm that both are well aware of Yahoo's volatility and have plans ready to draw data from other sources if necessary. Consequently it seems that both tools recommended here are as future-proof as possible.

• Niche Inspector. This program is partly a powerful keyword research tool and partly a simple to use, yet highly featured filtering system. You can create long lists of keywords, as you'd expect, but also analyze those keywords to find hidden niches that can prove extremely profitable. Click through to my review page where there is a video that I've created to show you some of Niche Inspector's great features. Recommended for beginners and intermediates.
• Keyword Elite. This is the Rolls Royce of keyword research tools. It encompasses five different modules that help you extract keywords and evaluate them in many differerent ways. In some ways Keyword Elite is almost too powerful which is why I recommend it for advanced Internet marketers only.

Why is Keyword Research so Important?

It is a subject that is so important that I think everyone who has any inkling to make some money online should be required to learn about it before they do anything else. And no, I'm not exaggerating. Even more importantly, everyone who is serious about Internet marketing, of any kind, should buy a professional keyword research tool. You can get free solutions, but a professional tool that will do the job for you efficiently and effectively is one of the best investments you'll make.

Keywords are quite literally the foundation upon which everything we do online is built on. I can't think of a single online business model that doesn't depend on it. And yet, so many people do keyword research half-heartedly - or ignore it completely!

Let me explain why it is so important.

Everything - and I mean everything - that happens online in fundamentally dependent on one thing: a person at the other end of the Internet who wants something. That something may be information, it could be education, it might be diversion or amusement, but it all stems from that person having SOMETHING in mind that the Internet can help them with.

Of course, they will almost ALL go to one of the search engines as their first port of call and type in a keyword or phrase.

Bingo! Billions of people all telling us exactly what they want to know - and therefore what we can profit from.

Keyword research is the online equivalent of what offline companies call market research. It tells us what out potential customers actually want.

By knowing what the market wants to know about we can easily tailor our online business to supply exactly what is needed - saving ourselves a massive amount of trial and error, a huge amount of time and at the same time maximizing our potential profits.

Want to build an AdSense site? Keyword research tells you what each page should focus on.

Do you prefer the affiliate marketing model? Keyword research tells you which products to represent.

Portal sites? No keywords, no portal.

Silo sites? Niche Marketing on Crack? Bum Marketing? They all depend on you knowing what the customer wants and that comes right back to keyword research.

Ah, but what about creating your own products? Sure keyword research isn't so important there. After all, don't the experts always say that you should follow YOUR passion, not someone else's? Those experts are wrong. If your passion doesn't have a market, you are just going to spend weeks or months of hard work with nobody to sell it to in the end.

And while we are talking about your own products, how do you think that authors come up with the questions that need to be answered by their books? That's right, they do keyword research to see what people are trying to find out.

Article writing is huge and blogging is vital. We all know that. But what is the point of blogging an article that doesn't focus on a keyword? Who is going to find it?

I could easily go on and on. But you get the point. It ALL starts with keyword research.

If you do nothing else today to progress your Internet marketing career, get yourself a good keyword reseach tool. it will pay you enormous dividends.