Question regarding KEI

Hello everybody - I'm kind of new here and I have a question about KEI.

I recently started optimizing my site for several Keywords and phrases. Basically I chose the ones with high KEI.

Than a thought passed my mind that maybe a phrase with high KEI isn't enough - you also need minimum competition in order to success.

for example:

If I optimize for a phrase which is being searched a 100 times a day and there are a 100 sites in this field is it the same or better than optimizing for a phrase the is being searched a 100000 times a day and there are 100000 sites in this field.

I would appreciate if you could answer me if there is a difference.
Is a high KEI good enough or do I need to make sure that the KEI is high and that there isn't many competition as well.


Thanks.
Ofir.

I am not sure what your question is exactly, but personally I have not tried to focus on one word keywords. It is very hard to get to the top of the SERPS for Chat. But what about SEO Chat or SEO Forum or SEO Online Forums etc. Sorry if that didn't help.

To clarify my question:

If there are 2 phrases that I want to optimize for and they both have the same KEI but one has a 100 sites competing for it and the other has 100000 sites competing for it - is it still the same effort to optimize for both of the phrases ?

Thanks, I kinda understand it. I don't have an answer to that.

My wife and I look at Adwords to see which words are the popular search words. We sort by them and then sort by which words pay the most for adsense. For instance, we will type in pimples. Maybe the Adwords people will pay more for "Pimple creams", but the most popular keyword search is "pimple ointments". We usually try to figure out a way to optimize for both. Maybe we will add pimple ointment to the words in the URL and creams in the meta keywords.

We want the high paying ads served to as many people as possible.

Adwords is free BTW. You don't have to buy ads to use their lookups.

This question does not have a straight yes or no answer.
It depends on who is working the 100 searches and how hard and
who is working the 100000 searches and how hard, look at the competition.
I have come across niche 100 searches that were very very expensive to
rank for and then some 100 search rank could take two or three days