Hi Jon,
Just to make my research a little more thorough and accurate I not only look at the SOC for a keyphrase, but also the number of optimized results - e.g. "keyphrase".
Does the same rule apply that you should set the number of search results in Google to 100 and find out "exactly" how many competitors there are...as opposed to just reading off the initial figure?
If so, do you think the same rules apply in terms of:
under 100 results = fairly easy to rank for
upto 250 = harder
etc
Or have you found a different pattern? I've noticed that most aggressive keyphrases (in need of a lot of links) are in the 600,700,800's etc
Thanks a lot,
Alex