Am I going for the wrong key words

I have pretty much been focusing on parenting message boards. Its a moms site as most of you know. But I don't think people do searches for moms sites or moms message boards although last I checked we had the number one spot for message boards for moms in google. Someone suggested to me that this was a poor choice to optomize for. I was feeling really good about things. We have the number four spot for parenting message boards in google now. I don't want to try to work on something that is too competitive that I may never be able to get a top spot for. And also I really am trying to get my message boards off the ground so I would rather get people that are looking for message boards than people that are just looking for info and may never come back. I am getting found for a lot of things. I have been working on my articles, although I need to work harder and they are getting found.

Honest opinions? Is this a bad key word phrase? Should I be going for something more generic? And if so what.

I might be preaching to the converted, but have you tried the likes of wordtracker.com?

That gives you a fair indication of what keywords are popular.

If you really want to get a good idea, conduct a non-intrusive survey of your users to find out how they approached the site. That will give you a good idea of which is your most popular keyword (if your statistics don't tell you already).

Also, try putting yourself in a users shoes, what would you search for?

Are most mum's web savvy? Do they have a lot of experience using the web in general? I'd say probably not, since they have a lot on their hands already.

With this in mind, why not try something like "parenting chat", "parenting discussion" or the like since sum mums might not know what a message board is.

Don't be put off by thinking you can't obtain the top spot. A top 30 spot on a keyword will generate traffic. If you've got several of these, then you'll get enough traffic to make Google take notice. Not forgetting the back links, since the mums will want to link their family sites to yours if they have them!

Ask your users, they have a vested interest in making sure your site is successful.

I am going to find out what my members search for or how they found the site. I am getting a lot of traffic from just different articles for instance I have an article on bleeding during pregnancy that gets a lot of searches. I don't have every page optomized for parenting message boards just the main one. I am still thinking about this. I don't have the money to pay for a word tracking tool.

wordtracker has a free option that works just fine!

thanks!

Yes it certainly does. I didnt mention it since I thought it'd be apparent on visiting

There are other sites which do a similar thing to wordtracker, off-hand, I cant remember the names, but just try google. Im sure you'll find something.

Also, remember, wordtracker is for meta engines only, as far as I am aware, with the exception of Zeitgeist (not really useful in your case) Google don't make their data public, if only....

Personally, I find digitalpoint's free tools to be the best ... better than many pay for tools.

His keyword suggestion tool that displays wordtracker and overture results together can be found here:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/