All right, after a lot of soul searching and long and exhaustive research here's what I've come up with...

I've got a key word/phrase that Word Tracker rates with the following...

24 Hrs = 126
Competing Sites (w/ quotation marks) = 90,900
Competing Sites (w/ out quotation marks) = 27,500,000

...that last number of course seems quite daunting but when you factor in the smaller common words that are part of the key phrase I'm using I think that takes it up. Also, I've seen someone with a fairly successful site who's (very obvious) key words came up 149/319,000/34,700,000 when I ran a search on them. So I'm guessing these are acceptable? Perhaps the 24 hr number is a skootch low? Don't know. That's where I'd like some advice.

I've got so many damn words and phrases in my key word basket that I've got a couple possibilities but the stats above are for the one I like the most. Anyway...if some of the gurus on here could let me know it'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks, guys!

Well, hmmm. If this is one of your first sites I think I would try and find a few different keyword phrases, to see if you can somehow narrow your results down some more. That's an awful lot of competition, if your not right up on SEO and also
continiously building your seo campaign. This is not to say that you can't do it. One of my sites has around 38,000,000 competing sites overall and I am steadily climbing and am showing up on pages 2 and 3 etc. now for some of my terms.

You see although when you type in qoutes, and get 91,000 in return, this means that, these sites are in direct competition for your keyword phrase. Now just because these other sites may not be using this exact search term, they can still easily outweigh you in the results. If they have a lot of quality sites linking back to them, the number of links coming back to them, thier site structure, site optimization etc. will have an important role in this factor.

I would try and find a way, especially for your first site or two a niche that has preferably less than a million competitors, or at the very most 2 million.

Lots of competition is usually a good indicator that this is a popular subject and there is money to be made So I'm not saying don't do it, but be prepared for more work and delayed results.

At present I'm working on a site all about SEO, with this forum in mind to help some of the people hopefully from the start of their site building, so as to save them, much of the restructuring and extra work I had to do.

I have learned the hard way, that building and optimizing your site right from page one, and every other page, right at the start of your building, and preparing it for your competition, saves so much work in the long run. It will be introduced soon, but I have a few more things that I want to get done with it yet.

cheers Davin

I wouldn't worry about the numbers without quotes if your keyword has more than one word in it.

If your keyword is one word, then you have a lot of work to do.

Long tail keywords are 3-4 word keywords are great to target, less competition and if you get #1 on google for 3-4 of them the results add up to a lot of visits per day.

Low hanging fruit can be very profitable.

Charles

Very good point, Charlie has as well.

Davin

I'm looking forward to your site on keywords Davin. I have come up with some keyword phrases that look good to use - but I still wonder am I interpreting the numbers correctly. Keep us posted!

Hmmm. Well, you guys have given me a lot to think about. In my gut I'm thinking I should - at least at this point - stay away from any thing with that much competition, my problem is I have only a limited field of interest. I want to do something related to my hometown (Vegas) but every idea (read: key words) I tried to optimize either had a bajillion competing sites, or very few. Not a lot in the middle - at least things that were applicable to my own base of knowledge. It's tough.

Anyway, thanks for the responses guys. I too look forward to a website devoted entirely to search engine optomization!

I'm gonna think somemore about this before I immerse myself. I want to make sure I've got the proper plan picked out before I begin to execute it. Anywho...