Keywords with a high search volume are best because it means that if you can rank near the top of the search engines for them then you will drive a lot of traffic to your site. However, keywords with a high search volume are often very competitive as many people want to rank for them. You therefore need to find a balance between how often a keyword is searched for and how strong the competition for that keyword is.

One factor to consider on top of the search volume is whether you're targeting a particular keyword for SEO or PPC.

With PPC, you can generally target those keywords with higher search volume (so-called competitive keywords) compared to SEO. It's easier to influence the position of a PPC ad compared that of SEO because one of the main factors affecting the postion of a PPC ad is the maximum CPC (cost per click) that you're willing to pay.

You can't pay for the position of your web pages in SERP (search engine results page). To be listed on the first page of SERP for a competitive keyword, a lot of things have to be considered, planned, and executed, both on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

Keyword volume is only one part of the puzzle when determining which keyword phrase to target for SEO.

The other things you want to look at are:

1. SEO competition (do a phrase search on Google for the keyword phrase. if the results are more than 100,000 it is not a good keyword to target. Also, check the sites that are occupying the top positions. Are they highly targeted to that keyword phrase, i.e. is it in their title, header, etc.)

2. Adwords competition (see if there are many ads for this phrase. if no ads, then it might not be a monetizable keyword phrase).

Keywords that are high in traffic and that also satisfy the other two criteria are good ones to pursue.

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