Zero searches but very high competition

tough to say without knowing your keyword, but it's possible that people often use a phrase though it makes no sense for people to search for it.

For example, I just typed in "and then I went to" into Google and there are were 132 million "competition" for that phrase. People use the phrase all the time, as when telling a story, but it wouldn't make sense to search for it.

Yes, it would depend on the phrase, but also know that Google's keyword tool can give DRASTICALLY different results on different days. ... Check the same keyword in a day or week down the road. You may see a big difference.

Same for the search results in quotations, by the way. A number of times I've thought I've stumbled onto a nice little niche only to check it again on a different day and see my "nice little niche" turn into a complete waste of time.

It's good to use different keyword tools to check as well considering you know who owns the pay per clicks

Lots of fun things can happen there.

First Google tells lies all the time so it is really impossible to know with any certainty what the competition and search volume is using only Google's tools.

Also many phrases, as Chris Pine pointed out, just naturally occur. For example if I'm writing about fishing to market a fishing product with a term like "fishing lures" I'm very likely to have phrases related to water, rivers, boats, lines, casting which are all part of the natural flow of an article or sales page.

On the other hand I've had more than one SEO conversation where the guru has told me that your chances of ranking for any / all keywords drastically improve with the more keywords you rank for. Kind of like building interest on a savings account.

So I guess it is also hypothetically possible that savvy SEO experts would target zero search phrases in an effort to help rank for higher traffic higher competition phrases.

22,000 isn't particularly competitive...even in quotes.

it all depends on the words. For example when I target marketing and seo clients I generate leads and clients all the time from google says no one searches. The ones that google says have massive searches don't even pull as good as a few.

Like been said obviously theres a little numbers game with google since they own the pay per clicks so you want to use more than 1 tool and test test test

I see, well in that case there are some pretty good search volumes for the words in that phrase.

Given it's a product name there is likely to be plenty of competing pages, every online retailer, product review site on the planet that sells this thing will have that phrase on their page.

Probably even multiple indexed listings on Ebay, Amazon, PriceSpy etc.

Sure not too many people searching for that entire phrase but "phrase" is not the same as [exact] so with that phrase on your page you've got people searching for things like Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker which is showing me 60,000 phrase searches from my data center or any number of the related terms. Some of them over 800,000 searches.

The term "quart ice cream maker" gives me 27,000 searches on phrase match.

My short answer would be not to optimise for that phrase.

Longer answer...if you're looking to sell that product then that phrase is going to be in there somewhere naturally. And it is most likely because it is a product name that there the number of competing pages.

It would probably rank somewhere for those other terms but somewhere is not that much use if it isn't in the top 10...or really 5.

If that's a product you think has potential then check out the related search phrases and start building your SEO around those. Check out what sites are in the top 5 spots and see what SEO they have going on, what phrases they use.

"cuisinart ice cream maker review" and "cuisnart ice cream maker reviews" have almost 1,000 exact searches a month and look fairly easy to rank for...in my opinion.

They are people who know what they want and are likely to buy.

At the end of the day pick terms with traffic, check out the competition and it all boils down to just how much time and / or money is it worth to get to the top spots for those search terms.

Now I'd be saying something different if that exact product name had some search volume according to Google...targeted traffic is good and product names are excellent.

a little disclaimer because it is a great technique when you can use it.