A good portion of my business involves spending hours and hours using incredibly powerful but difficult to master software to uncover thousands of the exact, targeted keyword phrases people in any given niche market are typing into the search engines.

When people new to the internet discover what I do and see the huge lists of keyword phrases and search data I uncover and compile, they often ask me what the heck it is used for.

My clients and customers on the other hand, tend not to ask questions at all. They just pay me, take their lists and happily disappear into the shadows. Do they know something you do not?

It really all boils down to this - you do not have a good chance of creating and launching a successful niche website if you are lacking the keyword data about your niche market.

If you do not know what related keywords and keyword phrases potential visitors are actively searching on and if you do not know how often they are searching for these terms, you will never know exactly what it is they want, how badly they want it or how you can get that information in front of them.

Good keyword data lists for any given niche market are hard to research and expensive to come by, but are invaluable to those who put them to use. Good niche keyword lists serve many functions including:

They allow you to see the actual thoughts and desires going through the minds of those in your target market as they search online. At the very least, these list will give you hundreds of ideas for different websites, info-products, ebooks and more that you can create and profit from, knowing ahead of time that there is a demand.

They are used to launch pay-per-click campaigns to drive targeted traffic to your site. Savvy web marketers know that bidding on large numbers of targeted keywords with low bids has distinct advantages over bidding on just a few expensive top-trafficked phrases.

They are used for creating content for niche websites. For example, the keyword phrases are useful for generating article titles and topics you already know are in demand.

And of course, they can help with SEO. For those with a little more experience in search engine optimization, knowing exactly what phrases people are searching for in any niche gives them an incredible edge and much higher chance of achieving high search engine listings that lead to traffic.

If you are just throwing up websites without incorporating professional niche keyword research into your site planning, content development and search engine optimization, you are truly taking a shot in the dark.

And if you are not able to afford the expensive software and time it takes to learn how to use it to do the research yourself, there are always others who offer their research for your use.

James B. Allen is a niche marketing consultant who provides private research for a small, exclusive client list of internet marketers, website designers and SEO professionals. Download a free sample of his market research at:http://www.NicheGuild.com