Aghh! Keyword Confusion

They're both "right", just different. It's like someone liking McDonalds and someone else liking Burger King, who is "right"? Both have the potential to do very well - it's all about how you implement it - content - SEO - etc.

I would say that if you are writing articles for others then you would want to be writing articles in the log tail with low competition so that your customers will be able to capitalize on them and rank. If you want to give away some articles though then people would be most excited about getting articles with high search volumes regardless of competition because the niche will recognize the keywords

Reviews of specific products within a niche would probably be great as well. I have always looked for those and besides Amazon products I have had trouble finding them, for example non-internet marketing in Clickbank marketplace

Keyword research doesn't have to daunting, well it can be.

But, if you're talking about building a niche website, then just start with the Google keyword tool. Yeah, anything 1000> on exact match is good for a start. Although I like to go for the 3000> kw phrases. More traffic.

Long tail is always better - 3 or more words. Plus, I encourage you to better target "buyer kw phrases" like "XYZ TV review" or "buy XYZ TV".

Actually, not so many are targeting these, and a huge potential unfolds for you. Those kw's are much more profitable than the popular, general ones.

Cheers,
Ray

Try keeping in mind that 'competition' actually means that there are buyers. Within the Google keyword tool, that competition is the ads being bid on within Adwords. Many courses out there are teaching that you must research low competition only in order to rank well in the search engines. Well, maybe so, but that also means that there might not be enough buyers out there searching that particular keyword to make it worth your while.

Keyword research is like a glove, different methods fit different people. I personally have found that it also depends on a particular niche. The same research method doesn't seem to work as a 'blanket method' for all niches across the board in my case. I'm not sure why, I've just noticed that you have to just do it in order to get used to it to the point where you will just get better at it.

My best advice to check your competition would be to go into Google and type in your selected keyword and see what comes up. Check how many ads are listed on the page. Believe it or not, the more the better because it means it's a hot market. Check the page ranks of the sites within the first page, but don't always let the PR distract or discourage you from moving forward.

Your question isn't really a very easy one to answer, but I've given you the basics of what competition mean to help you out with that. Hope this helps.