Good and confident keyword research that will enable you to give top dominating companies a run for their money involves an extreemely focused effor on a single keyword.
The idea here is to choose a single keyword, and to set up an entire site, article or lens with the sole intent of ranking for that one kwyoword.
My most effective keyword research to date ended up making me over $100 in just one hour and still does. With almost zero upkeep.
Yes it was from a single keyword, shortly after i had set it up, it bought in tons of traffic, my email subscripyions were sky rocketing and also my sales were just doing the same with hardly any maintenace. But 100% of my income was from yahoo! ads (like adsense), so there was absolutely no labour required.