I'm afraid I am a newbie to all this keyword stuff - sorry, couldn't find a newbie section to post in and would like a very simple, non-technical, explanation of a couple of factors. What sort of numbers should I be looking for when I do a Google search? Why search in "..."? Does it matter whether there are any Google ads? Which figure is the most important, with or without "..."? Ha, I could ask a million and one other questions but I'll limit it to these and spare you the pain.
You want to look for the number of results in google's organic search box, which would be the box that you type in when you are looking for something and you will see the number of results for that particular keyword. Then you want to use googles keyword tool and type in that keyword and find out the search volume and advertiser competition. Divide those 2 numbers to get the "Keyword Effectiveness Index" (KEI) and rank them for each keyword. Throw out the really low KEI to narrow your list down. Next, you search in quotes so that you get the results for a search for that particular keyword If there are Google ads on the right or the top, depending on the number, that keyword is being advertised on. The number of ads that show will help you see how competitive that keyword is. It doesn't matter if there are quotes or there are not. If you want to specifically target a keyword use the quotes. If you want to get a broader idea of how many results are for the keyword don't use them. I personally only use the quotes when I'm trying to find a blog or a forum or an article related to a keyword. But that is your choice. Hope this was helpful and if you need any more help feel free to messege me.
to put it simple... keyword research is some thing like for example if u wannn by a "plasma" what you will do you will search in Google for plasma reviews to choose which one to buy right. But when you type "plasma" you will get lot of results which is not sorted. Its a generic result. So what you do is you will search for brand wise which you have in mind for example " Panasonic Plasma review or Sony plasma review" else you will search for "52 inch plasma review " So lets take the above sentences ... here the keyword are 1.plasma 2. Pansonic plasma review 3.lg plasma review 4.52inch palsma review these are the keywords ... but to master in this you need to know what to use and what not to use. Based on the search. I guess this will slightly tweak you senses.
The most important thing while doing keywords research is the serach volume of that particular keywords. So chose those keywords which have good search volume. You can check that by Google adwords.
If keyword have a big search volume, it's exactly a lot of competitors! When it's mass competitors it's very difficult to get better rank for separate keyword.
are you serious? the people above you have explained this VERY CLEARLY, if you still don't understand it you need to get a book