Quotes or no quotes for keyword research?

[Lunar]

Hi everyone! I'm working on an article marketing campaign, submitting targeted articles to ezinearticles using keywords that have over 10 daily search estimate and also less than 10,000 competition sites.

My question is: When I'm doing google competition research, should I put the keyword in quotes (keyword tools vs. "keyword tools")? Obviously in quotes it gives much less competition (and so I might decide to write an article using that keyword), but customers don't actually type it in using quotes.

For example, "video game designer career" (with quotes) has only 6,290 competing sites, but video game designer career (no quotes) has over 570 million! It doesn't seem to make any difference the when using the Adwords Keyword tool...

So which one is useful, in finding keywords, and also running a search to check the effectiveness in your campaigns?

Thanks!

[Mmfh]

To get a realistic idea of what's going on I use Quotes only.
That way you know that the keyword phrase has to be typed in the order you are using it.

Good Luck!

Mm

[JasonValens]

With quotes for calculating competition numbers, without quotes for testing strength of competition on first page i.e. is it filled with authority sites

[zakiprofit]

For the better result, you must use quote. I use it all the time when I'm searching for new niche market