Multiple clients in the same niche... question

Third question tonight, and im tired... bad combo

I was wondering how you handle it when you have multiple clients lets say in the restaurant business, and they're all looking to rank for keywords like 'best chinese restaurant in (city)'.

Isn't that creating your own competition since you are going to be working to get all of these folks on page 1 in Google?

How to go about it?

I usually take only 2 or 3 clients for same keywords and suggest different keyword for the client if he insists..

Competition between your own sites is harmful

Depends on the $$ and agreement.

If they pay enough, then go exclusive.

If not, then judge it for yourself. No restaurant are same. There are many types of Chinese food. And how far apart are they? If they serve a totally different neighborhood and area, there will probably be limited conflict.

Secondly, even if the restaurant is ranked #1 with 5-stars rating, not everyone likes to eat at the same restaurant everyday.

I prefer exclusive. My way of business

Tough one, if it is for the same kws, then there may be a conflict of interest. However, you can have clients in the same space, but who cater to different markets. For instance, there is a huge difference between a fine-dining Chinese restaurant with 8 courses and the Super Golden Lucky Dragon Buffet that is cheap as chips. Try to see if you can differentiate somehow.

As well, you cannot guarantee that site A and site B will respond the same way in the SERPs even if you do the same SEO work on them both, so you could simply do your best for each client and let the algo sort it out.