Dev team wants to kill keyword research during product selection. Am I wrong here?

Got a disagreement with our product team and wanted to get some outside opinions.

Our current process includes a spreadsheet with market analysis, competitor analysis, keyword analysis, and profit analysis. Now the dev team wants to remove keyword research entirely.

Their reasoning: Product selection should be about the product (features, supply chain, trends). Keywords are "marketing stuff" that can be figured out later.

From an ops perspective, this feels like a mistake. But maybe I'm biased?

How important is keyword analysis DURING product research? Can these two things actually be separated?

Here's why I think keywords matter upfront:

Reality check - Search volume tells you if people are actually looking for this. If core keywords are dead or dropping, the ceiling is low. Doesn't matter how cool the product is.

Feature decisions - Dig into modifiers (material, size, use case). Example: Coffee cups. Are people searching "insulated" or "portable"? That tells you what to actually build. Without this, you're guessing.

Competition - High PPC bids? That's your future ad cost. All big brands ranking? Good luck. Keyword tools show you the battlefield before you enter.

Customer language - Devs think in technical terms. Customers search in everyday words. Without keyword research, you might build something great that nobody can find.

Product selection is the skeleton. Keywords are the soul. You need both.

If we skip this upfront, I feel like we'll end up with products that have "differentiators" nobody actually cares about (low search volume), or launch into insane competition we weren't prepared for.

How do your companies handle this?

Does your product research phase include keyword analysis?

If your dev team wanted to drop it, how would you convince them to keep it?

Appreciate any thoughts. Thanks!

Answers (17)

Gwendolyn Martinez

2025-03-15 06:09

Of course you can't drop it! Keywords are the translator between the product and the market. Devs look at spreadsheets, but customers type words into the search bar. If you cut out keyword analysis, your market research loses its tether to what buyers actually want. You're just developing with your eyes closed. You can run all the margin calculations you want, but if you launch and nobody's searching for what you built, it's game over.

Gabe Maldonado

2025-03-14 20:08

Yeah, you can't drop keyword analysis. Keywords are literally how customers find your product. If a niche doesn't have solid, relevant keywords, listing a product there is pointless. Customers literally cannot find you. You end up trying to buy traffic from loosely related or super broad terms, burning through ad spend with nothing to show for it, or maybe you get a few ad sales but your organic rankings for any decent term never move.

Madison Ray

2025-03-14 09:19

Keyword analysis *is* literally just measuring market demand. Why on earth would you cut that out? That's just... unscientific.

Shelly Rivas

2025-03-13 23:38

Product selection and keywords go hand in hand. Here's how:

Matching Demand: Keywords tell you what the market wants. Researching high-search terms helps you spot potential winning products.
Checking Out the Competition: The keywords your competitors rank for show you their whole product and positioning strategy. You can use that to find gaps or areas with less fight.
Getting Found: If your product and its keywords are aligned, you're gonna rank better and get more eyeballs on the platform. Kinda the whole point.
Boosting Sales: It's not just about traffic, it's about the right traffic. The right keywords bring in shoppers who actually want what you're selling, which bumps up conversion.

So from an ops standpoint, sure, maybe you can separate them on paper. But in reality, they're totally dependent on each other. Cutting keyword analysis out of product development is a recipe for building stuff nobody's searching for. It kills your competitiveness and your visibility. So yeah, you absolutely keep keyword analysis front and center during product development to make sure you're riding the wave, not fighting it. Bottom line: They should be locked at the hip to maximize your product's chances.

StoreMethod

2025-03-13 12:17

From years of doing product development, keyword analysis is still a must-have tool for any dev team or individual. My process always starts with *who* before *what*. Who are you selling to? You need to know their core needs. And how do you figure that out? Honestly, keyword analysis is probably the easiest, most cost-effective way to get there. Every tool out there—ABA, Opportunity Explorer, the major ERP platforms, tracking software—is feeding you keyword data to show you what's behind customer searches. One, it gives you a development direction, points to new features or trends so you can differentiate. Two—and this is key—keyword analysis also maps out your potential traffic. Plain and simple, it shows you your likely converting terms and lets you estimate your cost to acquire that traffic, so you can model the difficulty of the fight before you even decide to enter. So when OP says the company wants to drop keyword analysis... I gotta wonder, do they have some other, better method they're replacing it with? If so, please share.

Dev team wants to kill keyword research during product selection. Am I wrong here?

Answers (17)

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