Is trying to get to no.1 worth the risk?

[glengara]

I'm having my doubts, having seen many pages surpass mine to subsequently crash and burn, I'm increasingly content with my lowly first page positions ;-)

[bobothecat]

Assuming you're not doing anything 'wrong' - why wouldn't it be worth it? The worst that can happen is that you'll have some spammers try to duplicate what it is you did - which are generally the sites that take the plunge.

[caveman]

Yeah, glengara, have you done anything wrong? :-)

Me personally, I find that being in the top five positions, or top three sites (indents being counted), is generally all that is required. And yes, often, getting to #1 can bring unwanted attention.

In the past few years, I can't tell you how many times a site of ours has gone from 1 to 2, or 2 to 3, or 3 to 2, or 2 to 1, with little difference in traffic. Largely because our homepage on our most important kw rarely accounts for more than 5% of a given site's traffic. FWIW.