[I’ve noticed some people having trouble understanding why they should be using EXACT MATCH when doing individual keyword research. I figured I’d throw this out there, in case it helps anyone who’s unsure of what exactly the difference is between broad match, phrase match, and exact match search traffic. Broad Match – The number of monthly searches containing your keywords in any order, along with any number of other words in the search. For example, broad match results for ‘dog training’ will also include search traffic for ‘dog training, training a dog, training a small house dog, dog obedience and trick training’, etc. Phrase Match – The number of monthly searches containing your keywords in their exact order, along with any number of other words in the search. For example, phrase match results for ‘dog training’ will include search traffic for ‘dog training, dog training for small dogs, golden retriever dog training, german Shepard dog training’, etc. Exact Match – The number of monthly searches containing your exact keywords, in their exact order, with no other words in the search. For example, exact match results for ‘dog training’ will include ONLY the search traffic for the exact keyword phrase dog training.]
No not 100% accurate, because they round the number, so it is approximately 99% accurate.
The Exact match data is the only data that reports search volume for an individual keyword. Those other match types include search volume for an unknown number of other keywords, so they are meaningless for analyzing individual keywords.
Also, I should mention the search volume is for all searches performed across Google’s search network of which they supply search results.
To answer your second question, You cannot predict your actual traffic to a high degree of accuracy. There are many variables involved. Including how compelling your page title and descriptions are written in relation to both the keyword and your competitor’s page titles and descriptions.
There are also big differences in the click-through rates for different types of keywords, branded versus generic keywords. Since Dog Training is a generic search term, it would tend to have a slightly lower CTR than a branded keyword term on average.
The average CTR for position #1, as shown in the largest publicly available dataset, shows an average CTR of 23%. You can adjust that based on the type of keyword and how compelling your Title and Descriptions are in relation to your competitors on that same page.
So, If your CTR was about average for a generic keyword term you could expect about 18% of the exact match search volume for that keyword. You may also receive search traffic from other terms besides the one keyword you are analyzing, but that would be a rough estimate based on averages for traffic from that particular keyword search.
