Hi Guys What is the best source to find out what the top keywords that have been searched in a particular niche market. cheers Andy
The best free tool is the Google Adwords keyword tool. The best paid tool is probably Keyword Country. Sometimes it's a good idea to cross reference results from more than one keyword tool. Since the stats are coming from different places, there is variation in the numbers.
I am confussed in Keyword selection, is it best to choose the same ones as your competitor, or use different ones?
Andrea it depends on how good at link building and onpage seo. If you know you can beat your competitors, then by all means, outrank them for their target keywords. If you aren't good at building links, you would be better off targeting less competitive keywords. Keep in mind that just because your competitors chose those keywords, it does not necessarily mean they are the best keywords to target. Do your own research to see which keywords have suitable search volume and competition level.
Really you want ones that have less competitors than others. You don't need to think of it in terms of getting keys that NO ONE has. You will find some with like... 100,000 competitors and some with 20,000. Yeah 20,000 sites using it is a big number but obviously not as big as 100,000.
I see some other folks had already given you very good advices. Just to add on from my point of view. You can use allinitle to check your real competitions. Anyone who knows basic SEO will definitely want to put their keywords/phrase in the title tag and thus this is a good gauge before you embark on your campaign.