Over the last couple of days, I’ve received several e-mails promoting the Keyword Research Pro software. Since these e-mails came from marketers I consider to be credible, I have no doubt this is a quality product, and that it does exactly what it claims to do.

But I won’t be buying this keyword research tool, or any other.

I don’t need to.

I know exactly what my visitors are searching for over at UltimateFatBurner.com, and exactly what searches bring them to the site. It’s pretty simple; an array of fairly generic terms related to weight loss, supplements and diets, and more specifically, individual product names, usually coupled with the words “reviews” or “information.”

Keyword research for me is simply ensuring I stay on top of the newest, most popular, and most aggressively advertised products and review them in a timely manner (incidentally, I use the professional version of the FreeFind site search on UltimateFatBurner.com; this allows me to review reports of current and most popular searches performed on the site – a very handy feature).

But what about utilizing powerful keyword research tools to find keyword opportunities related to my niche? And then using these keywords to create new, Search Engine optimized material based upon them? After all, that’s what most gurus recommend, right?

It is.

But here’s what most gurus don’t tell you when they are fishing for commissions on the newest keyword research tool or software…

Just because you may find keyword opportunities related to your over theme or niche, doesn’t mean your audience is going to appreciate them. And it certainly doesn’t mean those newly created pages are going to rank well with the Search Engines (SEs). Let me explain…

Many of the SEs use theme-based ranking algorithms to some degree and tend to give the ranking “nod” to sites that have tight, focused, and targeted themes.

To further illustrate this point, let’s stick with my main site, UltimateFatBurner.com. Obviously, the pertinent theme of the primary subdomain is fat burners, diet pills, weight loss supplements, or whatever you want to call them. Several years ago, I bought into this “diversification” of theme and, using various tools and software, unearthed a flood of targeted, related keywords (mostly within the adult type II diabetes and exercise niches).

But the content I created around the most promising of these keywords flopped… horribly.

Why?

Two main reasons…

1) UltimateFatBurner.com’s audience visits for one reason, and one reason only; to research the latest and greatest weight loss pill. It’s not a stretch to figure that those looking for the “quick fix” in weight loss are not going to be particularly interested in practical, exercise-based options.

At one time, I thought I could use the reviews of popular fat burners as a way to draw people to the site, and introduce them to more practical options for weight loss. But with a passive medium like the Internet, it just doesn’t work that way. In other words, if you start telling people stuff they do not want to hear, they will just go somewhere else.

In other words, my audience could care less about exercise-related content, regardless of how popular a certain piece of keyword software has revealed it to be.

2) No rankings: Exercise and weight-related health issues like Type II diabetes certainly fit within the “weight loss” theme. But apparently, not enough so that these pages piggyback on the established credibility of UltimateFatBurner.com within the “fat burner + weight loss supplement” theme (almost every new fat burner review I post will be listed in the top 10 rankings of Google with minimal SEO efforts).

In other words, the SEs know this site as an authority on fat burners, not on exercise and type II diabetes (in fact, there are already well established sites within both of these themes, regardless of the keyword opportunities I discovered). As far as the SEs are concerned, the three topics are not close enough in theme.

Sure, I could have created new subdomains, created reams of content around both of these topics, and acquired the necessary in-pointing links for the SEs to consider this site to be an authority on these themes and then divert the necessary traffic to make them viable

But then my efforts would not be focused on fat burners, a theme with which I have good standings with the SEs already. Obviously, I’m better off to keep my efforts focused here.

So what’s my point?

I’m certainly not arguing that keyword research is not important. It is. Vitally. Especially for new websites. But depending upon your niche, it may become less so as your web site becomes more and more established. As it does, it may be that it is your audience’s interests and your log files that will point you towards new keyword opportunities.

Of course, it’s always a good idea to periodically perform some basic keyword research, just to make sure you aren’t missing anything critical – you shouldn’t be, if you did your research properly in the first place – but you really don’t need anything expensive for this (Google’s free tool works quite well!).

The bottom line is that you may not need a keyword research tool. Sure, a good one may be effective at identifying related keywords, but it can’t tell you what your audience’s interests are and what material they are most likely to respond to. It can’t tell you whether these keywords are close enough to your existing content’s theme to be able to “piggyback” on your site’s established credibility within it.

Just something to consider before you go binging on the latest keyword research tool! ;-)

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