If I am making an entire website based on one theme... is it best to use a pretty common keyword to get my site lots of searches but hard to get ranked high in google... or better to use a keyword with a longer tail so that my site has a better chance of being high ranked by google but not as many people using that keyword when they search? is the trade off worth it? for example .... if I were doing a website about vacationing in alaska... would it be better to go with a popular search term such as "alaska vacations" in which http://tools.seobook.com/ keyword tool says it has 171 Daily Overall searches, which would be hard as heck to get top page ranking... or go with something like "alaska adventure vacations" which http://tools.seobook.com/ says only has 69 overall daily searches... any suggestions?
Use keywords that will drive targeted user to the site. 99.9% of the time targeted users = conversions. KP
Go for the longtails IF they are getting traffic. us the adwords est to double check traffic. build small ,use LSI (google that) and you will; get traffic.
IMO, i think you are knowing your business better, place keywords that direct target your products nothing else. If you target keyword like "cell phone" Than there are several companies selling it, forum discussions, articles on cell phones, blog on it, review on the same, and than comes the product cell phone. You need to Target keyword such as "Sony Erriccson K750i" , it will directly come your site on top, and not have more competition for the same, and you will be feeling lucky one day in future. This keyword will help you to get the right and rich visitors they only want to know or buy about the k750i product of sony mobile phones.
Long tail or no... don't think it's a matter of one or the other, do both.. go for the long tail, and go for other keywords as well... put time and money into the keywords that are buy indicators... like ..need an xyz phone, not just xyz phone... just an example..