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I agree with all the thoughts shared so far but would suggest SEMrush as my preferred tool for keyword research. When conducting research, it is important to clarify if you desire to rank in organic search or plan to use PPC advertising. Many of the tools, including SEMrush and the adwords tool Alan shared, define "competition" in terms of ads, not organic search. High competition means there are several bidders for PPC ads who are bidding close to the same amount. This information is completely unrelated to organic search. Even tools which evaluate competitiveness for organic search can be highly inaccurate. For example, many tools will look at the current top 5 or 10 results and strictly grade based on PR / PA. There could be less relevant results from sites like Wikipedia or other heavy hitters which rank strongly for the query therefore showing it as highly competitive. By targeting your keyword usage you may be able to beat other sites on some keywords. To clarify, I am not recommending you try to ever compete head to head with Wikipedia, but there are ways to beat them in some spots.

I have to agree with both Pashmina and Opt.  Springmetrics.com and SEOmoz are totally different tools.  For optimizing your site (or your client's site) for SEO, SEOmoz is the way to go - no question.   When you want to measure the revenue and conversions for the keywords for which you have optimized (along side of your other PPC, email, and social media campaigns), then you use SpringMetrics.

Hi Nick, I'm following up on older, unanswered questions here in Q&A. Did you ever get this sorted out?