How low is too low....

Usually 300-400 search count seems quite low or we can say too low if this is global search volume. You should at least go for those having couple of thousand searches per month say 2000+ (no specific figure).

For me thats a big waste of time
for one thing you are looking for EMDs which is a big fallacy old wives tale of half the board, IMO they offer a very minimal boost to begin with in the serps, besides you only get that benefit for ONE kw for that domain, why waste your time

another thing is MOST or many of the GOOD EMDs are not available, any more so you pass right by kws without the EMDs available and to me that is crazy

you should be looking at how competitve the kw is, not whether the EMD is available
to me EMD is a crutch used by guys who are not confident or knowledgeable enough about SEO to rank, so they think EMD will make them rank high so they spend all day looking for them, ignoring perfectly good kws that have no EMD available

to me its a waste of time that strategy

the kws I am targeting for my new niche have 5k-15k per month EXACT match
these are the kinds of volumes that will earn money

are the EMDs available for these kws?
I dont know , and frankly I never even bothered to check

all I care about is the Google top 10 competition and most of these kws, believe it or not have less than 50 backlinks on the top 3 google competition

now THAT is something that matters , and its like money in the bank
EMD? dont have time to waste on that buying a new domain for each kw, total waste of time and money. If I had focused on which kws had EMD available I would have missed all these kws

When I buy EMDs, I look for a keyword to start targetting that has around 3,000 to 5,000 exact monthly searches but that keyword also includes other keywords with much higher exact monthly searches, so that will allow for future expansion easily.

However for inner pages, I will happily use keywords that have around 500 exact monthly searches, if they're relevant then it will help the site in terms of bulking up content, interlinking and some traffic but it also massively improves user experience.

In general, that's on the lower end.

It would depend on how much work you would need to get them to the top of page 1. If you need to active SEO work, I would not spend my effort on those terms.

On the other hand, there are long tail keywords that only require 1 back link and will get you to the top of page 1. In fact, I've use this strategy for thousands of long tail keywords that report 0 searches on Google AdWords Keyword Tracker... however, these terms get me 50+ visits a day.

Its definitely in the lower end, I personally don't touch things in the hundreds at all. But that is just me.

300-400 is too low but if it is the keyword that bring sales and you can reach your profit target, then it is okay. The searches will increase in number though. In my advice, you should take 5000 to 10000 searches to be more secure.

Hey OP,

You have lots of opinions here...many of them differing! I would say that if you're looking to build a mini-niche site around a keyword with that low of search volume and looking to monetize via affiliate offers, AdSense, etc...that's too low. However...as someone else had mentioned...if you have an actual product you're selling (Let's say a fairly-expensive, high-margin product) it may be completely worth your while.

IF you're looking for keywords to base a blog post around that volume is probably fine. Let's say, for example, that I was targeting the Forex niche with my blog/site. Targeting a term like "Forex trend trading" would be just fine...even with the low search volume. If the content is good...for the people searching for that keyword, you'll have exactly what they're looking for...and rank for the long-tails as well.

You have to consider both traffic and possible returns on any keyword you write for. For a blog post to boost traffic on an established site 300-400 is perfectly fine. It's no guarantee of success though just because its low search volume; I've targeted what I thought were easy keywords with small returns (only 500ish searches) and ended up getting no traffic and basically no ranking from it whereas I've written content for a keyword that is getting upwards of 10$ clicks with about 500 searches/month where clearly it is worthwhile going after that keyword with a solid backlinking effort.

I look for over 2500 exact match monthly global searches. and then look for low competition.

If you're using GoogleKeywordTool then they give a good estimate but often I find that if a keyword is only saying about 200-300 unique searches a month then chances are its more like 100-200 so unless you are targeting a lot you wont see much traffic from it. Althought if they are very targeting and still getting clicks its worth pursuing to get your sales!

I usually aim for at least 1000 a month if not 2000 for a minium exact search. Just one thing with that is they will have more competition and hence more work to target, but will be more worth it too.
Cheers good luck!