Key phrases v's keywords

[sonneti]

I have found a bunch of niches with around 500 searches for each per month when I search for "XXXXX YY ZZZZ" (in quotes) I find 350 websites so getting to the top should be fairly easy.

The problem is that people wont be searching for the niche in quotes, they will be searching without quotes.. which returns 886,000 hits in google.

So if I get my site up and running and #1 for "XXXXX YYY ZZZZ" (in quotes) how will I rank on google when someone searches without quotes?

[Randy]

That's impossible to define specifically, because there are 200+ items that Google looks at in their algorithm when they determine search results. Another exercise is to look at how well the pages that rank in the top ten for each phrase have done their onpage SEO. You won't receive any traffic to speak of for most phrases on the 2nd page anyway, and if 6 of the 10 results on the 1st page have done a lousy job at onpage SEO, then the query is pretty noncompetitive.

[kingcobra]

I`ve found that far too few people use quotes in search terms to bother about, and if you really need to rank well for the term straight up to get these anyway.