One of my new sites is targeting a harder niche than the others. I'm just unsure whether it's going to take more time than it's worth to get ranked in the 1st page of google. The homepage is targeting a keyword that is globally searched for 20,000-30,000 times a month and has google search results of 2 million pages when enclosing the keyword in " ". All the websites in the first page of results have page rank 4 or 3 What's your guys thoughts? Is it worth going down this route and sticking at it or you reckon it's going to take too long and I should target easier keywords?
It will be hard to rank if you have a new site that has no PR on it since all sites on the first page has a PR of 3 or 4. However, there are other factors to consider as well such as the quantity and quality of their backlinks, domain age, etc... Although if there is money on that niche, then by all means do it. Just don't start on going in on the kill and trying to rank the most competitive keyword that you have. I bet there are a dozen of long-tail keywords that you can target for easy money no matter how competitive the niche is. Start at the bottom and work your way up.
Thanks that makes sense. So would it be worth keeping my current domain name rather than switching to a long tail one? Should I just optimise my home page's headers and keywords to a long tail keyword then as the site starts to get a page rank, switch over back to the more searched for keyword?
What I mean is optimized inner pages of your site for those long-tail keywords. You shouldn't optimize your home page for a long-tail keyword unless that keyword has several thousand searches per month. Although you don't want to start with a keyword that has millions of competition already such as make money online, weight loss, etc... Find a different angle to it, for example - weight loss for kids having etc... I guarantee you that there are keywords out there that are long tail in nature but is still being searched a lot. You've just got to dig a little further.
I've been staying below ~5,000 local exact search and going down to ~500 at times on long tail. I find it easier to set up pages to optimize rather than the main page that target very niche words. It also helps to play with the words too. For example, if you are targeting "trees" try to alternatives like "leaves, foilage, plants, vegetation" etc
I vote: Dont give up. 20,000 searches/2 million competition is NOT too competitive. You can reach top 500 sites within 1 month, and then from there just keep monitoring your rise in the ranks every week. When you see your site jump 2-3 spots every week, it will feel like a great achievement and will help motivate you to PUSH IT to get on the first page.
20,000 searches is not a competitive key word. What is your source (google adwords?) In my opinion, a keywords needs to get at least 500,000 searches per month to be considered competitive. And also, google adwords keyword volume tool overreports the number of searches. The real number of searches are like 20% of what they report.