The Cardinal Flaw in Research

I’ve heard people talk about building websites, and suggesting that you should not even go into business before researching to see whether it will succeed. As though research of what has been can tell you what will be. Keyword research, and market research, should never be considered as tools to set a course by - they are only tools to help KEEP you on course once you have chosen a course.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that research isn’t valuable. It is. But it is only one part of the equation, not the whole thing. People who tell you that you should choose a business based on the most popular keyword searches have got it all wrong, and have misinterpreted how such research should be used, and they do not understand the limitations of such research. It is a common “internet marketing” scam though - to promise that you can do a little research, build a tacky website, stick in some AdSense, and watch the money roll in. They could not be further from the truth - but they have also given the impression that you cannot succeed in a crowded market, and that any site built without doing popularity searches is doomed from the outset (when in fact, their advice is absolutely wrong, for a number of reasons).

SEO research and Market research share a common flaw:

They can only tell you what has been. They cannot tell you what will be.

On September 10, 2001, computers were booming, and on a growth trend. Food storage was flat, a fairly lifeless business after the Y2K boom had faded. September 12, 2001, computers were flat - except for a brief surge in laptop sales. Food storage, on the other hand, went through the roof. Two days before, keyword research would have told you to optimize for computer sales. Two days after, computer sales would not have been a wise choice. Conversely, two days before, food storage would have been a poor choice, whereas, two days after, you’d have been well advised to have ignored the grim reports six months earlier and had your food storage site well established.

That is an extreme situation, where something unexpected intruded. But things that are unexpected always intrude. A business that is doing well in a strong economy may struggle in a recession, whereas one that struggles in a healthy economy may gain in a recession. A new competitor may enter the scene, a new segment of the target market may spring up. Market or keyword research won’t tell you that those things are coming.

And they cannot even TOUCH an entire class of business: when you are doing something that has not been done before, coining new terms for it, carving out a market niche that isn’t even there when you start out, providing a product or service that people don’t even know they need until they see it. Research can’t tell you how well you’ll do with that, and it can’t really help you know anything other than which overlap industries you might want to pull into your marketing.

The information yielded by marketing and SEO research is only partially complete. It can be used to draw certain inferences, but outside of those, any conclusions drawn from it are dead wrong, because essential information is lacking for accuracy. It can tell you WHAT happened, within the questions they asked. It cannot tell you WHY, or what motivated people to do what they did. Without that information, many assumptions about what the numbers mean will be completely in error.

Some people are trying to use research to forecast success, and it cannot do that. It cannot predict individual intelligence or style, it cannot predict your determination or consistency. It cannot tell you what you should or should not do in your business. It is merely a facet of the information you need to weigh in the balance and consider, not a roadmap to tell you what business you should be operating. It only shows what has been, based on what is present at the time of the statistical analysis.

Use it as a guide to help you do what you do in the most effective way. As a guide for what people have been looking for, and a SUGGESTION of what they might continue to look for, it is good. But it doesn’t mean you can set out and not adjust, nor does it mean that people will behave in the future toward your business in the same way they’ve behaved toward similar ones in the past. It’s all in the individual differences from business to business.

Good SEO research does not mean you ignore your own business strengths and pay more attention to someone else’s idea of what you should do than to your own common sense. It means you decide what you’ll do, then use SEO research as a guide to help you know how to best present that.

For it to benefit a business, it must be used properly. It isn’t a helm to set the direction. It is only a rudder to help keep you on course after you have already determined your direction.