Promoting one of the most competitive keywords on the net.

Would you even start? am i crazy for trying?

[lazerzubb]

This is the case.
I have developed a website, and the main keyword for it, is one of the most competitive keyword on the web. If a company came and asked the company i work for, if we could optimize there site for that keyword we would laught.
But i can't resist the challenge (myself not with the company).
The keyword in question has nothing to do with adult och casino business.

I would just like to hear your views.

Would you even start?
The budget is my own money, and i don't spend them that much, so no PPC or something like it.
No money will go to advertising, all i will do is to use my own SEO skills.

Just Yahoo have more than 14000 directory listings for this keyword

Am i crazy? would you do it? do you think i have a chance?

[Grumpus]

Sure! But understand, there are more and more people who are understanding the "concept" of searching a bit better and optimizing for a single keyword can do you no good. Check out one of the sites that lets you see what people are searching for (Metaspy is one). Hardly ever do you see a single word search. It's at least two and sometimes many more.

My competitive single keyword (there are 9K sites in yahoo) slaps me down deep into the results on any place I'm listed. Add another word to it and I come up in the top 10-15 quite often.

In my highly competitive site, I don't get more than 400 uniques a day, but a good number of those (probably 80%) come in on search terms longer than 2 words. You might look at this as a half empty cup, but when people DO get to my site, they find what they are looking for.

Sure, get that word in there. See if you can get it up in the top 5. Only problem with that will be that when someone pops in a two or three-word phrase, you're gonna drop down to 20+ because all the other sites snuck into the results ahead of you.

From my observations of what people search for, they tend to type two words - one is "Specific" like "Widgets" and the other is more broad to help qualify it like "buy" or "manufacture". If your widget site comes in #1 on widgets, but I key for "buy widget" or "widget buy", with an emphasis on "buy", the more general and therefore competitive term despite it's lack of any real value on its own, I could very well pop in ahead of you on many searches.

Good Luck!
G.

[lazerzubb]

Of course i won't optimize for only that word, but it's my main keyword, and if i got to the top 10 i would get pretty much visitors.
According to govertures suggestion tool this keyword is searched over 1 million times last month :)

[JamesR]

I would only go to it if you can make good money at it. I am in some competitive areas and was surprised by how well it turned out. Another factor is if you are competing against other SEOs. If not, you have a much better chance than you think if you know your stuff.

[startup]

This is a challenge that you would accept no matter what any of us are going to say ;). Why? Because you think you can do it. Try it with every bit of energy and determination you have, and don't be surprised with the results. At this stage in the game you already have knowledge.
When checking links to sites already ranking high, do not be discouraged when you find 2000 to 10,000 links.
This project is 90% research.
Have fun.