i've targeted long tail keywords for my gaming blog and thanks, it works! I ranked on at least 5 keywords. Giving my blog at least 1,000 unique visitors and up to 3,000 daily pageviews. I will be targeting more keywords this 2011 and i'm hoping i can reach my target which is 5,000 to 10,000 daily pageviews.
When speaking of micro niche, I concentrate on main keyword which is generaly a domain name. Longtail keywords come from text and subpages itself. I use synonyms on backlink anchor text and also in text. It is very hard to optimize and build enough and efficient backlinks if you have a lot of KW. It is very time consuming so I rather focus on one that is carefuly selected (has a lot of traffic and low competition)
Choose one keyword to target per page. Then mix in similar words to pick up additional traffic. If you target too many words on one page Google will get confused as to what keyword that page is really about.
Well that will depend on how you can handle, but it is recommended to have atleast 5 - 6 but if you could maintain greater then be it as long as you could still look to it.
3 - 5 for the homepage? Don't you think that's a bit too many. I've been doing SEO for over a year and from my experience, we do not stuff the homepage with more than 2 keywords at any time. How would you even fit more than 2 keywords on the Meta Title (one of the most important factor that search engines consider)?