Tools to use, specifik keyword research?

This is a very basic, general idea of how we do keyword research:

You'll never really get the true volume for any given keyword phrase. Sure, Google's Keyword Planner (or any other tool) will give you an estimate of how many people are typing EXACTLY that phrase in that order into Google, but it won't tell you how many other related phrases that search phrase also shows up in the SERPs for. In other words, the traffic numbers are significantly higher for practically every search phrase listed.

We find it best to just type in a seed keyword phrase and get a list of all the related phrases. Generally speaking, we ignore the search numbers because they just don't really tell you the true potential of any phrase.

We then do an actual search for each phrase to see what pages are turning up on page one in the SERPS. You'll find that a lot of times, the same exact sites show up in the same order for related phrases. You'll want to group those phrases and use them collectively on a page to target that grouping.

Then, it's a matter of evaluating whether you have a chance of getting onto page one for that grouping. If page one is nothing but the major names (Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc.), you stand very little chance of getting on page one. If there are small, relatively obscure websites showing up on page one, you know that you at least have a chance to get as high as those smaller companies' pages are.

Bottom Line: You really use two tools. Something like Google's Keyword Planner and your brain. The latter tool is the one that so many people forget to use.