It is indeed very useful to evaluate the exact search volume for certain keywords and I totally agree that something like “xbox for” wouldn’t be useful… however, for certain long tail keywords (4+ words in length) it may be quite ok to have a lower volume and those would also be winners as such.

Here is why. If you have a high search volume for a 1-2 words length keyphrase, you should usually expect a much higher competition too. in certain niches, that would be so fierce that it would be almost untouchable directly…

But let’s say it is a medium type of niche and you still get good volumes… IF you’re on the #1 spot!
But to get there – that’s another story.

Let’s say you manage to be on the first page and get some piece of the pie. To do so, there would be more than on page SEO necessary (lots of off page work involved.)

However, to get the same amount of traffic would be much easily achievable by targeting #1 – #3 SERPs from long tail keyphrases with very few competitors, usually being reported as such simply because there is no one else knowing what they do there.

When we (SEO wise people like you and me) come there, we do a few tricks with the magic SEO wand and Voila… #1 achieved.

The volume of traffic we can get from that may be quite similar to the piece of the pie I was talking about initially.

IMHO, looking for the long tail keyphrases, even with as low as 30 searches per day for #1 SERP is a good move…

My 2 cents, he, he…

Steve Lorenzo SEOVirtuoso

One more little tip. I use google keyword search tool and then at times go to Yahoo search marketing instead due to the insane cost of some of these phrases

Rick

To David J & George if you do have marketing questions you can submit them here:

http://www.publishingsuccessblog.com/askdave.html

I always forget to mention that, but any questions that I get may get answered in a future email or blog post!

Thanks,

Dave.

I am a newbi and dont have a web page as of now but hope to in the near future and the information that I found on your twitter blog will surley help and I copyed a couple. thanks.

At present I am interested in affilliate bussiness (sellling other peoples products) and any good solid addvice you could give on this project sure would help as I am very slow at present. Dave Have a good day. will talk soon. Thanks again.

George McDaniel

Thank you very much for that little tip, I was always wandering how you go about finding out this information.

Keep up the good work,

Regards

Ray.

Talk soon enough DJ