Step1: 1. i go to google's adword tool 2. I search for "love handles" and put there "phrase" instead of "broad" 3. I find there 'love handle exercises'. now for the 'analyze this' part... i see it has 9.900 searches / june and 8.100 global monthly volume search (I think this means average searches per month from january until june) then i go to google.com and search for "love handle exercises" and i put quotes there (to see my real competition) 5.660 with quotes, 1.500.000 without quotes. 9.900 searches / month > 5.660 results. does this mean the niche isn't well explored? or i must consider the 1.500.000 results? and one more question. if the 'advertiser competition' bar is full it means not to bother with that keyword? :| can some gurus post their 'how do i find keywords?' i think my strategy lacks something big :|
First in regards to advertiser competition, you only need to think about that if you're planning on targeting the phrase for your Adwords campaigns, or use the phrase on your site for displayed Adsense ads. Your small 5,600+ competition for the quoted phrase is your exact competition, but those 1.5 million still count towards your competition. A good way to compare is make both searches, then see if the top 10 in quotes appear on the top 10 without quotes. If they do, they are still your strongest competition despite the bigger numbers.
hmm, some of them appear, some not. and how to check if the competition is scarce for a certain keyword? i thought looking at the bar there. if it's full, don't bother. if it's 50%, do bother! best way is to think like... "hmm, 10.000 searches / month = enough and only 2.000 results when searching with quotes" right? It's all so confusing to me it's not even funny. :| i can't even understand the basics of keyword research. :|