I'm convinced to see what others do for your niche and keywords and copy that or go harder. SEO is a cut throat business and no one wants competition. Only so many spots in top 10 with some of those will belong to other more well known sites. I'm helping a friend out with theirs and their competition has be keyword stuffing and positing fake reviews and such for years and dominating the keywords. The first few spots are all theirs on Google. 

People like to say here to not do blackhat tactics but it works.