I will try to help you here.
Be forewarned, this is going to be a long post.
Since I do not know how much you know, I will give you a little background.
There are 3 kinds of search queries. Broad, Phrase, and Exact. Most Internet Marketers do their searches in Exact, I do many in Phrase, and if you sell WSO's, you do it in broad.
The difference is this.
Exact match is a search for that seeks people who search EXACTLY for that phrase. (Duh!) It is the truest result for the keyword traffic, because it is the exact phrase searched for.
In other words, if you search for "fix my computer" your results will be for sites targeting that phrase exactly..
If you target "fix my Computer" and someone searches for "fix my stupid computer", your site may show up in the SERPS (all things being equal, though it never is), but it will be under the person who targeted "fix my stupid computer".
In this example his site will be an Exact Match for the search query, and yours will be a Phrase Match. (His- Fix my stupid computer, Yours Fix my stupidcomputer) In your case, the search phrase is there, and the terms are in the correct order, but they are not adjacent to each other.)
Going on to broad match, this is where the search matches across the broadest spectrum.
Phrases that will be broad match for "fix my computer" will include "my computer fix" "computer my repair" "repair my PC, pc fix, fix the car computer, and thousands of matches using synonyms and associations. Across the broad match, "fix my computer" actually matches "ipad support" and "calibrate electronic instruments". As you can see, this type of match strays from the core meaning of the keyword phrase, and gives a wildly optimistic estimate of potential traffic.
For our purposes, we will address Exact match, although I do most of my research in phrase match. Broad has its uses, but only pertaining to a specific type of website.
Broad matching will bring you more visitors, but they will be un-targeted and unlikely to buy. Exact brings you in far less customers, but they are (hopefully) finding exactly what they searched for, making them much more likely to make a purchase.
The intent of the searcher who made the search query itself has to be looked at as well, and it is very important. Generally there are three types of search query intents:
Location, and information, and action.
If you are selling something, you want to target the keywords that are action queries.
For instance.
"Charlotte NC" is an locational query, there is no way that you can infer that this searcher is wanting to buy anything. Yhey may just want historical or geographical information about the city.
"tourist attractions in Charlotte NC" is an informational query. This person is not seeking information about the city population, tax rates, ect. They want information about something else in the area.
"Hotel reservations Charlotte NC" is an action keyword. This person is much more likely to be searching for a hotel in Charlotte than the other two searchers. He has probably made many of the other queries before he arrived at this one, too. The more you appear in this persons previous searches, the more likely they are to become a customer. This is exactly what a sales funnel is for and does.
When the query is an action query, it usually is considered to have "Commercial Intent."
Remember these concrete rules.
People do not search for what you think they do.
Do your research and find words that people actually search for, not what makes sense to you.
At any given time the number one spot in Google is the best solution Google can come up with, even if it is not a good match.
If your competition is in the top spot, but their site is not correctly optimized for that word, you can often beat them with better on page SEO, simply because they are not as good a match for the query as you are.
Google will base this ranking on what it thinks the site is about.
If your on page SEO is wrong, Google will send the wrong visitors to your site. Your traffic may be higher, but the visitor will not find what they searched for. No engagement, high bounce rate.
Remember these general rules:
The longer the search query, the more likely that someone will convert to a customer.
In other words, target the long tails.
Long tail keywords bring in lower traffic, but they convert better
Now bearing all that in mind:
You are trying to find an action keyword that has enough search each month to be worth your while, that has as little competition as possible, THAT YOU CAN RANK FOR.
The following things are indicators that you can use to decide on a keyword. You need to examine the top 10 sites for this keyword, and determine:
How closely their onpage SEO matches the search query.
How high is the PR for these sites.
(sites with low PR are easier to beat, 10 pr 1 sites in the top 10 is easy picking, 10 pr 5's is a tough row to hoe).
How much REAL competition is there for this term:
Lower is better. (Find this out by searching in Google for the exact term, Google will indicate the number of results for the query. This is your actual competition.)
The domain age of the competition.
Domains build authority with age, the older the top 10, the harder to knock them out.
The linking of course.
(Backlinks and pages indexed are also factors, but I usually do not sweat these. On page and quality will always trump pages indexed, and a single PR5 backlink can be worth 100,000 PR1's).
The ideal keyword will have the following characteristics, the closer you get to these, the better the keyword.
Commercial intent
The more traffic the better
as few competing pages as possible
competing pages a having low PR, DA
Competing pages loosely targeting the keyword
Few or poor backlinks (the real thing here in the number of referring domains, and the quality of the links)
Watch for these things.
Any keyword with commercial intent that has low competition, but people are running more than 3 or 4 ads in adwords targeting it, is a hidden gem. People are buying traffic for a word that no one is targeting. When you find these, its OK to piss yourself.
When you find an informational keyword that has insane traffic, but little competition, the phrase you are looking at is often part of a long tail action keyword that is a gem. In other words, you only have part of the real phrase that is getting the traffic. Search for that keyword in phrase match to uncover these long tails.
Hope this helps
