very confused about keyword research

[themindvoid]

Hi, after scouring the newbie and general forums, i have taken steps toward hosting my first affiliate site. At this current stage, i have found a niche that i am passionate about, that i KNOW there is a market for

but, keyword research has me confuffled.

As recommended by a few threads on here i found some good keywords, and want to compare them by popularity/competition ratio

but i have no clue how to interpret the numbers i am getting:

for "keyword A" on google adwords external tool ( here on abbreviated as extool) and it said avg 14,800 per month(not enough info for febuary). fine. then i use allintitle: "keyword A" in google and it only shows 6 competing pages.

then to make sure i run the same keyword in SEO book and wordtracker, both which produce no results.

conversely, when i put in a what should be a more popular/generic "keyword B"

extool shows 210/mo while "allintitle" 162 competing and SEO book an agreeing value.

so my question as a first niche site, what kind of numbers should i be looking for minimum, so that im not wasting time, how much competition is too much?

and is the 14,000 vs. 6 competing just an error or something?

 

[Linda Buquet]

I can't really say using blind results. There are some things that seem like they don't add up on this one but it's hard to know for sure without being able to check it myself.

If you want to PM the key phrases, I guarantee on my reputation they will remain confidential, but I'll share what I find out (generically without giving away the KW) here in this thread to help you get the answer and the info may help others too. May turn into a little lesson depending on what I see when I check.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I may break this up into 2 posts as I get time. This 1st post is about the 1st phrase that had 6 competing.

Hmmm the 6 was 6 competing SITES. It's suppose to show competing pages.

Go to bottom of the allintitle: "key phrase" page and see where it says:

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 9 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Click there and you will see there are really 4,400 competing. Now most of those are a bunch of pages of those sites (stores) that all have that phrase in the meta title so they aren't all going to show in the serps. The biggest percentage are from GetPrice a shopping comparison engine.

Analyze the competition in those 1st 6 results. #1 is a PR4 home made looking store. There's a yahoo answers result too, which is good.

Also analyze key phrase without quotes, the way people would search and check the top sites. Most are retailers but don't have that exact key phrase and some aren't even very high PR.

I think this phrase may be a keeper based on the quick look I was able to take.

I'll try to look at the other later in between other projects I'm working on.

 

[Linda Buquet]

The 2nd key phrase doesn't have as much popularity but it's just another phrase about the same type of product. So if you do a site about that main product category, that 2nd phrase would just be the keywords for one of your pages or would be a category page.