Does it make any sense to pursue linking to lesser competitive terms or long tail terms rather than chasing down the very competitive terms that require so many more links? While the competitive terms do have more searches, they are more difficult to rank for. I have seen some suggest that you should have 50% links to your main page, others say 80% to your main page but should you target 2-3-4 or more terms for your other 50% or 20% whatever it might be rather tan your front page?
You should try to find the right balance between the two. Try to rank for something not that competitive. See how it goes, understand your niche and then when your site is older, target the high volume keywords
I agree with zexy. For a newer site it makes sense to first go after some terms that you can rank relatively easily for. Once you build up some rankings and your domain's authority grows, you can concentrate more on the competitive terms. There is no exact formula for how much you should link to your homepage vs your internal pages. Use whatever works for your particular niche. Just treat each landing page as it's own site that needs some links to rank for the targeted keywords.
you should find something that is not so competitive in the beginning so you can rank high on them and focus on the more competitive ones, if you go for the competitive ones right away it could take a while and you still might not see any results
You can include the main word in your long tail it will help later on. Example-keyword is hosting go for free hosting (remember its just an example) As you see the word hosting is in the long tail phrase. Once you're top for lets say 10 different long tails you'll see the benefit!