Targeting reasonable keywords

Hello,

I am not new to SEO but I'm not very skilled either. I've done SEO for a few websites. I want to know how many monthly searches for a keyword I should target. I would like to target a low competitive keyword that gets over 70,000 monthly searches. But I know, I definitely can't start there. I need to build my way up to it.

I've been reading a lot of stuff on here. And I just want to know what good number to target for monthly searches is for a semi new blog is?

I am relatively new as well, so take my information with a grain of salt.

It depends on how niche you really want to go. Most of my MNS range from about 1500 to 25,000. Coupled with high competition adwords, low competition neighbors on the SERP, and good on/off-site SEO - one can drive a fair amount of traffic. But I also have sites with hundreds of thousands of monthly searches, they are generally harder to rank, but I tend to shoot for a good percentage of those searches vs all of them as a traffic source.

Also, you don't need to target *just* one keyword. I believe the general idea is 3-4 major ones (someone else correct me if I am wrong). So you'd have your main keyword (LTK, EMD, etc. etc.) and then your on-site would target another 3-4 to expand your audience.