Other then the obvious checking your keywords in google with "some keyword", what are other methods to find out how much competition there is for your keyword in google? (or how heavily saturated your niche is) Any tools (online or program) that might help? (someone pointed me towards KEI, any free Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) tools online?) thanks (apologize in advance if this question has been asked)
http://www.goodkeywords.com/ it's a freeware though I haven't really tried it myself. For checking how heavily saturated my chosen keyword is, Google never fails me. I just type in my keyword and see the results. My benchmark is around 300,000 results. If above that, I consider it as already heavily saturated. I only use Adwords in case I'm trying to look for alternative long tail key words.
Google has reduced the number of results for real estate in my area. The 300,000 results would not be a good benchmark for me.
I use Web CEO (Software needed to be downloaded), nichebotclassic.com (online free tool) and wordtracker. These all tools provide me KEI details which further help me to identify good keywords for my website. Try it. Also there are many other keywords tools like goodkeywords, adwords keyword tools, google suggestion, google trends and many more.