Chasing competitive trophy terms - is it worth the business risk?

[Whitey]

For those that compete for positions in competitive vertical markets , or those that observe them , I wondered what the consensus is about managing the risk of chasing after trophy terms.

Although I'm only an SEO "hack" I keep across quite a few very large online companies with top quality SEO's , both internal and external - and it's often quite scary to find out the reality of what they've been through in terms of SERP penalty's. They've all had issues. And that's bad for business which is all about recurring brand stability.

Whether those "flags" that Google received and acted on were algorithmic , editorial or competitor reports to Google, or a combination of both , who knows. But i wonder , from a commercial point of view , is it really worth putting a business at risk with the added Google and competitor attentivity that a trophy term/s bring.

What do SEO's advise their clients, what do business' instruct their SEO's to do .... etc etc ; Is chasing trophy terms worth the risk ?

[tedster]

Depends on how you "chase". If you're a SMB battling some 800 pound gorillas at the top for that particular term, and you chase that monster competition by buying do-follow text links, then the risk is probably too big. I wouldn't risk losing "trophy term + word" traffic just to chase the trophy, I'd take a more gradual approach.

It also depends on the business model involved. If page views are essential (predominantly ad-driven monetization) then there is more temptation to chase a trophy word. If conversions of some kind are what matter, then trophy words can be very poor performers.

I'd also consider the nature of the first page results, to see if the type of site I'm working with has any real chance to break in. Some tempting trophy words appear to have a kind of "taxonomy" imposed on them - based on Google's "user intention" research. If Google has pegged the phrase as a pure "informational intention" search, then a transactional site hasn't got much of a chance to break through these days.

[Whitey]

800 pound gorillas at the top

I found some 800 pound gorillas nailed to the floor with penalties . It seems the scale of their linking activities in search of trophy terms did them no favours. I guess my point is the scale of the business may not matter either when trying to occupy a trophy term.

The higher you fly .... the harder you fall