Keyword Research without a Computer?!?!

Over at Webmaster World there is a discussion regarding using a dictionary and thesaurus for keyword research. Thus, no need for a computer since those two books are available at any public library.

The point is that many keywords can be discovered that would otherwise be “missed”. An example is the origin of the word, which can be used to further expand the list. While these seems like a good idea, I feel what you will end up getting is an unmanageable list pretty quickly. Using those two books would be better served in helping generate words to use in the copy on the page, instead of generating keywords.

The bottom line is, if you spend hours researching new keywords, you still have to create the content, the offer, the points of difference. And if you create a “monster list” how long is it going to take you to create all the pages for effective conversion? Exactly. Personally, I think we spend too much time in analysis and not enough time actually doing the marketing.

And, the more obvious issue, is just because you find some really cool words in the dictionary related to your product doesn’t actually mean:

a) prospects are using those terms to search;
b) those are do use the terms, actually buy your product.

This isn’t about getting top ranking in the search engines. This is about getting qualified traffic and making sales. You also have to get a positive ROI in the time that you spend. You can literally waste your life away finding keywords where one person will buy a month. I feel that is a big waste of time.