picking the right keywords & ranking for them

easier said than done

[htdawg]

just wanted to see some opinions about the keyword research topic. everyone says find the right keywords that apply to your services/products ect.. finding the right keywords is relatively easy but ranking for them is another story. be it a high to low competitive keyword phrase.
it seems that for every keyword phrase you can think of, there is probably a domain with it.

anyone else have thoughts on this?

[Receptional Andy]

In the long term the only way to get the largest possible share of search for your area is to target as many of the relevant keywords relevant to your business as possible. In almost all cases, that's many thousands of keywords.

As you say, most things have competition these days, but that doesn't mean that it's unbeatable opposition ;)

If you're aiming high, then the real decision is about the approach, rather than the destination. If you have limited budget/resources or are a new site, then often the best approach is to go from the long tail upwards - target as many nice keywords as possible, and build up towards the highest value/most competitive stuff. If you have lots of budget/resource, then you can have the luxury of building down, which is usually quicker when it works right.