We know that higher PR ratings are more valuable within higher keyword contexts. What is a good (measurable) way of determining the competitivness of a specific keyword related to your PR?
type the keyword into google and see how many pages come up. ask yourself whether the pages that came up make sense for that kw or are they just garbage that google is trying to turn in. Another good way is to go to an adwords account and see who's advertising on it/how saturated it is. I don't think that PR really means that much any more.
search "keyword" in google see number of results search intitle"keyword" to see how many sites have that keyphrase in title This makes an ideea See first 1-3 sites how strong they are(content backlinks)
I use Keyword Country (see signature) and then I do a manual check check by searching Google to make sure that the advertiser pool is high. What I like about KC is that they give you the number of competitors who are SEO optimized for the keyword. So, even though you might get a lot of results for a word, there MAY be only a few who are serious competitors. Then I look at the first page of search results to see if I can compete.
Use this windows based software title for niche competition. After you plug in your keyword, then gather associated keywords, just click the gather data button. It will return competion for 100 keywords. Hope it helps...
PR has no effect on your rankings. To know if the keyword is competitive, search the keywords on search engine and see if how many is the search result if it's million results then it's too competitive.