First page on google for good keyword but almost no traffic

Did you use exact match when doing the keyword research? Sometimes there's a big different between exact match and broad match search number.

I mostly did phrase match when doing research.

My justification is that it's a blog with a bunch long tail terms that will be picked up (it's not a micro niche site). It's around a fairly common problem, so there will be more keywords that'll hopefully my site will also rank for.

MS is showing:
Exact Match: 18,
Phrase Match: 250,
Broad Match: 560

PBR: 45%

I'm not really sure what to do at this point, if #5 position is only returning at most 5-8 visitors per day, would you continue building the site or move on to something else?

The numbers in the Google tool are often pretty vague and don't seem to eb accurate but you should only count the exact match number when doing your reasearch.

I'm ot quite understanding what you men by "ranked #5 for broad"

Am I missing something. That is still an exact search for natural results. Users are not going to use quotes or brackets.

the broad only applies to adwords when people search for longer phrases/variations/orders including all or some of the words you are targeting.

You should give a try to different keywords if you are experiencing that you are not getting much traffic from those keywords.

So what do you guys I suggest, I do?

Obviously, I should be getting more than 5-8 visitors/day if I'm #5 for a keyword that "should" get about 1200 broad searches/day.

I assume it's pointless to try to rank in top 3? Competition is a bit tough with PR3-4 sites, and I'm still PR0

Is your query returning personalized results? Try using a proxy and inprivate browsing mode in IE.
Alternatively add statcounter stats to your site. Statcounter gives the SERP location in the visitor logs. Thats quite accuarate than anything IMHO.

According to me you need to put more efforts so you can get top#3 position so you can get more traffic. You can also try social media (Facebook/Twitter)to get traffic.

Maybe the competition was low so you gain fast SERP increase.

How do you know your not getting personalized search results, what are you doing to prevent personalized search results?

Hello! If I was a user, or if I'm doing a search o0f course I would get the results with the phrase match with the one that I entered. I wouldn't settle for brackets. I hope that helped you in a way or so. Best of luck though!

You've got your terms all screwed up. There is no broad or phrase match in search. People cannot do a broad or phrase search. They can do a search with quotes or without quotes. That has nothing to do with the broad and phrase numbers you are seeing in the Google Keyword Tool.

Let's say your keyword is shiny blue widgets.

The broad search results are telling you how many times searches are performed a month that contain all three of those words plus any other words in any order. So things like...

where can I buy blue widgets that are shiny
my blue widgets are no longer shiny
blue shiny widgets discount
cheap blue widgets that are shiny

...would all contribute to the broad search results.

The phrase search results are telling you how many times searches are performed a month that contain that phrase in that exact order but also with any other words around it. So...

cheap shiny blue widgets
discount shiny blue widgets
shiny blue widgets review
where can I buy shiny blue widgets

...would all contribute to the broad search results.

The exact search results are telling you how many times searches are performed a month that contain that exact phrase in that exact order with no other words around it. So...

shiny blue widgets

...is the only search that contributes to the exact match results.

None of these have anything to do with searching in quotes or not quotes.

"shiny blue widgets" and shiny blue widgets both are exact match searches, but they might have slightly different results.

There is no phrase search or broad search in the Google search bar.

Now, you listed that MS is telling you the exact match is getting 18 searches a day. That is the real number to base your traffic off of. If you are getting 5 visitors a day ranked #5, you are lucky. I'm surprised you are not getting only 1-2.

So when you are picking a keyword, the only thing that really matters is the exact match search results.

Understood.

Now at this point, is my only hope that I will start getting a lot of long tail traffic (ie, phrase and broad) so that my traffic goes up?

Or, should I just start on a new keyword with a higher exact match searches?

What tracking code are you suing and make sure it is properly installed. Looking at the analysis, you need to get at least 100 visitors a day and i can't really figure out why you low visitors to your site.

I say forget the broad search when doing keyword research. Only look for exact terms.