How can you determine how much traffic will a particular search engine keyword combination bring-in? Is the number of results a good indicator? For example, if I search for "cool gifts" in google I get 9,350,000 results and if I search for "great gifts" I get 32,300,000 results. Does that mean that if I am 1st or 5th under "great gifts" I will get 3x more traffic than if I was 1st or 5th under "cool gifts" ?
not sure that you can estimate these things. a lot depends on your title and description. something ranked lower can have a catchier title/headline.
The number of results a good indicator of the competitors you'll have. The great that number, the more competitors.
Well, more competition is not good. I'm interested in how many people are searching for that term. For example, each day, are there 10,000 people writing "cool gifts" in the search box and 30,000 people writing "great gifts" in the search box? Is there any way of knowing?
yes there is a way of knowing my friend i use wordtracker - the free version. search it on google. its a great tool!
I use Overture's keyword suggestion tool. May not be the best but it got me where I am now as far as keywords go. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
You don't get volume info, but you can compare searches at google trends http://www.google.com/trends
Please see my keyword tool - manual checking http://forums*digitalpoint*com/showthread.php?t=257753 replace * with dot. And if u find it useful, do tell me