There are a few reasons why keyword research is important.

As mentioned above, keyword research provides insights into what your potential customers are actually searching for. This is important because this will lead you to create content that your target audience actually wants to consume instead of creating content that is not fitting for them. So essentially, keyword research will help you get relevant traffic to your website.

Another reason why keyword research is important is because it helps you understand the competitive landscape of your industry .You will be able to see which websites are competing for the same keywords and how difficult it is to rank for specific keywords, which can inform your content strategy.

Another important aspect of keyword research is that it can tell you the intent of what a user is looking for.

There are four types of intent:

1. informational: a user is purely interested in gaining information about a specific topic
2. navigational: a user searches for a specific website, for example  “growth skills”
3. commercial: a user is looking to find out information about specific brands or services
4. transactional: a user is looking for a specific product or brand with the goal of making a purchase

Here is an example of choosing the right keywords based on intent:

If you are writing an informational article around social media automation in small businesses, you start by searching for keywords around this topic. For example ”social media marketing automation” and “social media automation” are phrases you can enter into your keyword tool. These two keywords have a good amount of keyword volume, however, the intent for those keywords is commercial. Users are looking for products to help automate their social media and not necessarily information about what social media automation is and how it’s helpful to small businesses. It would be better to use a keyword like how to automate social media marketing, because the intent of that keyword is informational.