Hi and welcome!
Keywords are phrases that people use for searching in the search engines. For example "blue widgets" would be a keyword phrase.
If you had a site that targeted the phrase "blue widgets" you could use Google AdWords to bid on that phrase and appear in the paid Google results whenever someone searches. Each time your site gets clicked you are charged a predetermined amount.
The Google Adwords tool is a good way to check how popular a keyword phrase is. If you see a lot of Advertisers bidding on that phrase that generally means it's pretty popular phrase and it will cost you more to rank high for that phrase.
Also if the search volume is high you know a lot of people are searching for it and that also means there's probably a lot of competition for that phrase in the paid and natural results.
If I'm trying to decide what keywords to focus an article on I'll often use that tool to see which one is best. You want to find the right combination of demand and supply. You don't want keywords that are too popular because the competition will be thick but at the same time you don't want to focus on keywords no one is searching for.
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