How Do You Handle Hugely Competitive Keywords

[dannibecher]

I have a client who runs villa holidays. Obviously he wants to rank highly for the keyword 'Villas' - I of course ran out of the room screaming at this point. As one of the most competitive words on the holiday front, aside from putting the word 'Villas' in as many places as a can on the site and on link, are there any other strategies i could approach?

[htdawg]

you will have a better chance to get him to rank for phrases such as (LOCATION) Villa Holidays than just villas or vills holidays try focusing on location specific keyword phrases instead.

[engine]

It's also worth noting that generic keywords are not the best of converters. ;)

I certainly wouldn't be searching for villas. I'd search for villas [location], just as htdawg says.

Establish the reason why they want to rank on the generic keyword. Some businesses see it as strategic, and don't care about the cost. ;)

[Essex_boy]

generic keywords are not the best of converters, here here youll go broke doing it.

[Saffig]

Ask for an endless amount of money and then start building links with only 'Villas' in the anchor text.

This is a useless word to rank for as others have stated. It will have a low conversion rate as you are targeting people very early on in the buying cycle, where even the visitors are not sure what they are looking for, let alone you.

They could be looking for villas in different countries, land to build a villa, villas to buy or rent, a holiday villa management service, etc. So unless you client does all of these then what is the point?

Saying this some of the much bigger corporations like to rank for those keywords for branding purposes, but it’s a hugely expensive business.

[canadafred]

I think that trying to get some ranking for villa in itself is a good thing as it could facilitate the getting of rankings for the additional keyphrases (two or more words).

I would also suggest to the OP to consider harvesting the competitive synonymous phrases that are pertinent in the vacation/tourism industry. This will broaden the scope of your keyphrase range; cast yourself a bigger qualified visitor net.