Keyword research is a crucial task in search engine optimization. If you are to optimize a website, you should have keywords that are fairly competetive, even if not the most.
When you are to SEO a site, it is fairly useless to use keywords that has less or no search volume. It is an important task to research for keywords that have high search volumes and less competition, since those are the keywords that you are likely to dominate.
When researching for keywords, geo-targetting is also important. It defines your position in the market. For example, I am selling Stuffed Toys and I live in the Philippines so I will use the keyword "Stuffed Toys Philippines" sinced the keyword "Stuffed Toys" is highly competetive and my site having visitors from all over the globe is not really important because I cater only to Filipino clients.
