Either you believe it or not, Keyword Research is the core of SEO. If you have strong knowledge about Keyword Research, then you have learned everything in SEO. Why? Because in SEO, you have 2 options: Either to find low competition keywords with good volume and rank with social sharing and a few backlinks only or work on any keyword and rank with quality backlinks.
If you find low competition keywords, you don't need so many quality backlinks, you just have to do good social sharing, and a few or no backlinks are needed for ranking the article. If you have written a good article as compared to your competitors in terms of content length, images, user experience, and On-Page then you have done a great job. Why? Because low competiton keywords are those on which no or few articles are written on that, but a lot of people are searching for the keywords. You find, and then rank them by writing articles.
You have to find long tail keywords which are mostly low competition keywords, then rank them. When your site will get old, and good content, then your site will be able to rank for a short tail keyword too. :)