Monthly Searches Vs Traffic

I've noticed there are quite a few new people lately who are just learning how to do keyword research and asking opinions about the results they're finding. That is great and these are the right kind of questions to be asking. I just want to clarify the difference between monthly searches and estimated traffic because they are 2 very different things.

Traffic

Trying to estimate monthly traffic can be really tricky. For example, your article can make that coveted first page of Google but, if you are on the bottom half of those top 10 results, you may only get a 1% CTR (click through rate). If you make the upper half of the page, you could see a CTR as high as 50%.

So, knowing that your CTR can be anywhere between 1% and 50% depending on your position, and knowing that you have no control over what position you'll get, it's probably not a good metric to use.

Searches

I look for a minimum of 50 monthly searches. I will even target a phrase slightly lower than 50 if the competition is low enough. Now, even if I get a great ranking for a keyword phrase with only 50 searches I may still only get 25 visitors (assuming a 50% CTR)

However, once I get an article on the first page, it always shows up for multiple versions of my targeted keyword phrase.

In other words, if I found a keyword phrase with 80 searches but I passed on it because it had <10 traffic, I could have missed out on 100+ visitors every month simply because people find my articles with keyword phrases I would have never thought to target.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them below :)