Google those three keywords ... click on the first three results for each. What tools are they using to get their rankings? Do you have access to these tools?

Are you facing a lot of exact match?

yes sir. Most of them are PR3-4s and they have thousands of backlinks. When I search for the terms in Google, the exact matches are between 50-90k. However, when I use the Google keyword tool and turn off broad and turn on "exact", the monthly search volume goes from 30,000 to about 100. It's really confusing. lol

The exact match tells you how many people are searching for that phrase in quotation marks. However most people don't use quotes. When you do an exact keyword phrase search in google, it will show you how many pages are trying to rank for that keyword phrase. For instance, there may be a million results for the term dog training without quotes and only 90 thousand for that same phrase in quotes. This is only the begining as far as seo goes though. To see who is really going after that phrase, you need to see who has that exact phrase in the title tags and h1 tags and description. Then how many pages are in dmoz and yahoo directory? How many back links do the top pages have? Fortunately, Traffic Travis does all of this in minutes. As far as I know there is a free version at traffictravis.com. You want to use the keyword analysis tool.

Hope this helped;

Brian.

When you place "keyword" in google search you are finding how many websites you are competing with that use those exact keywords somewhere on their website like in domain name, or title or description.

When you search exact match in google keyword tool you are seeing how many people are actually searching for that exact term.

thank you all. I figured that's how it worked,but there's so much conflicting information on the web, and everyone seems to be an "SEO guru". haha Knowledge is definitely power.

Hey I am also new in world of SEO. That's the great information you all shared here.....Thanks a lot

You are on the right track with exact searches, and searching in "" on google. However, to be confident that you are not chasing your own tail with keyword analysis you really need to have complete information on competing websites PR ranking, nr of backlinks which got them there etc. You need to invest in software such as Market Samurai for this OR get someone to run a report for you as a one-off thru Warriors, Fiverr etc Check the services offered section of this forum, and check Fiverr.com.

Hope that helps?
Mark

Hi,

You're doing your SEO Competition analysis wrong.

The correct method is to analyze the Top 10 results for the keyword on Google and see if you can build more backlinks than them. (there's a bit more details to it but that's the barebone).

You're supposed to use Exact match to show only search count for that keyword exclusively.

Broad and phrase are way off most of the times.

Source: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw...en&answer=6100

All good advice. That's the great thing about this forum you can learn a ton of stuff just hanging around reading threads and come away with as much as if you bought a good WSO on the subject (but there is one I do recommend). Sure there is conflicting advice and information but after a while you will see that there are some key things that are generally agreed upon. I use Traffic Travis and Market Samurai for my keyword research and have also used Googles free tools. Even these great tools don't give you the same results for the same keyword.... so I end up with compiling results and taking "the average" result from all my sources before I make a decision with what to run with.