Your home page has the highest chance of ranking for the competitive broad keywords (most popular general keywords) because most incoming links link to the home page and also because the home page is meant to tell both the visitors and the search engines what your website is all about.   This is why you should use less competitive broad keywords for your sub pages.

Sub Pages are the pages linked to your main pages. Usually your main pages are found in the menu tabs and the sub pages might be in the drop down list under a menu tab.

It is very difficult to rank for broad terms especially if the broad terms define an entire industry or website category. There is no guarantee that you will rank for one or more of the more popular head terms for your industry. Especially if you are in a highly competitive online market or if your website and domain name are new. It’s not going to happen.

Your competition has you beat for broad terms so you have to focus on tail terms (specific, longer, more refined keywords.) This is key information in order for you to be successful online.

Allow me to say this again in a different way, because it is vital for you to know this:

A Recipe for Failure:

If you choose head terms that have established website rankings for them, meaning that your competition is landing at within the first few search results for these general terms, you are setting yourself up for failure. This is especially true if you are just beginning with a domain name that is fairly new.

A Recipe for Success:

Much of the time, SEO fails because of a website owner’s over emphasis on ranking for broad terms. Even though the traffic volume for broad terms is greater, you stand a much greater chance of ranking well for specific tail terms.