An essential part of any internet marketing campaign is going to be keywords. As I see it, there are two levels at which keyword research can benefit your business or the businesses you're promoting which I will discuss below. Finding low competition, high traffic keywords can mean the difference between an uphill battle in the snow and rain, or, as the Chinese say, "A place where a Hero does not need to use fight" (really easy).

Niche Research

For affiliate marketers choosing the right niche is essential to making money. Choose something that's too competitive, and you'll be battling it out with entrenched professionals with big budgets, and cutthroat tactics.

Choose a niche with no traffic and you'll jump to spot #1 in Google only to find out that no one cares about 'car seats for cats'.

To find which products people are looking for, and which markets are not saturated with other marketers, you're going to need insight into who's searching for what, and where they can get it. Get the right info, and you'll start seeing affiliate commissions grow quickly.

Blogging Topics

Once you've got your core site set up, you'll want to reach out to readers, and provide them with high quality information. But how can you get them to find you amongst the millions of other web pages in your industry?

Obviously, you need to know what potential visitors (and customers) are looking for.

If you're promoting blue widgets, you need to know if people want the 'newest' blue widget, the 'fastest' one, or one that can fix their toilet. Maybe the blue ones break all the time, and red widgets are what's trending on the interwebs.

Whatever the case is, you should be writing about what people want to read, not what you think they should. A great keyword research tool is going to give you this kind of insight.

It Doesn't Stop There

So you've done your proper pre-campaign research, set up your site, and are reaching out to people. You're writing high quality information, on topics they care about. You know what they're looking for, and you give them the answers they need.

What's next?

You need to stay on top!

The the mythical world of The Internets, time changes quickly, and who's Top Dog today, might be left in the pooper scooper tomorrow. You need to analyze your competition, and expand your reach to new media platforms. Heck, keyword research even works for YouTube!

You'll need to see what's trending, what's changing, and what's meming (I made that last one up).

Point in case, a good keyword research tool goes a long way to getting found, regardless of your business, niche, industry, or individual goals.