Keyword research - How low do you go?

If you're judging your competition by putting the keyword in quotes then you're doing something wrong. It doesn't matter how many pages have your keyword, whether it be 50,000 or 1,000,000. What matters is the strength of the first page competition. A keyword could have 20,000 competing pages but the first page could have a couple PR4+ with amazing backlinking, compared to a keyword with 2,000,000 competing pages that has non-aged domains with a page rank less than 3 and poor backlinking. The latter will always be MUCH more easy to rank for than the former.

Keyword Research is a root process of SEO. I am using word tracker for keyword research and also creating services pages using it. so i am spending a lot time in keyword research before starting off page and on Page SEO.

I target keywords with search volume as low as 100 searches a month [exact] with new blog posts. I often need something new to write about and so I choose a low search volume, low comp keyword to target and write about. These posts usually get indexed and put between #7-10 on page 1 right away. That results in a very small, yet measurable new source of traffic, and I needed to write more content anyway.

So for the comp. level and search volume -> balance the time you put in with the results you'll see. The common 1,000 searches per month idea is usually about ranking the homepage for an MFA/EMD website. The idea of targeting one keyword per website is very flawed - your homepage is not the only page on your website (hopefully ). If you're going to create an EMD then yes, go for at least 1,000 searches/month, but you can rank for as many keywords as you want!

The competition level also isn't measured that well just through phrase and intitle searches. If you're really serious about a keyword, examine the first page results -> they're really your only competition.

Depends on what you need them for, i.e. Adsense, local businesses, a product or service, etc., and whether or not the ROI is there.

Your only competition is the first 10 results in Google SERP, not 50,000.

Research the results on page #1 in Google SERP, If you think you can beat any of those 10 results, go for it!

Here's how to look at it. I do no less than 80 potential searches per day. This adds up to roughly 2,400 per month. These are EXACT searches based LOCALLY (NOT GLOBALLY!) from the Google Keyword tool.

Competition is not based off of how many competing pages there are - this is a pointless measurement. Competition is based off of the top 10 results on the search page. Look at PR, incoming page links, site age, incoming domain links, and authority status.

I rank #1 with 174 million competing pages, with only 74 inbound links to the page. So, in other words, that number doesn't matter. Searching in quotes doesn't matter (no one does this anyways - only internet marketers do this...?).

Just play the role of someone searching for your term, and you'll be able to give Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and every searcher out there what they want.