What am I up Against?

I am green in the SEO world and looking for a little feed back. I received some work from my bro-inlaw from his sister who is a lawyer she has a website which she wants updated and is on page 5 and needs all the onsite completed. My question is, the first 2 pages are littered with Law directories etc. Now is this going to be a up hill battle trying to out rank directories and get ahead of them? Any insight would greatly be appreciated.

I think not. With enough efforts you can battle them easily.

The directories, usually, rank high due to the reciprocal linking (or if they are paid, due to purchasing links).

But you can optimize your on-page SEO better than them (since they are usually pretty general). Also, they lack in quality content, which your website can excel in.

So, while it is not impossible, it certainly is challenging (I don't know the figures or the strength of the competition, I am just assuming its high.) Targeting long tail keywords would be the best though.

Tail keywords are definitely your way forward!

I would combine LSI and longtail. Keep the code clean onpage and build your inbound links slowly from very strong sources.

Thanks for the insight guys

I want to chime in. Asking what you guys mean by long tail...? For example if your keyword was acne solutions an tail example would be "what are the best acne solutions"? Any article references?
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To understand long tail keywords you have to look at the niche market that your going after. If your in the printing industry like I am, everyone and there mother wants to be number one for printing, business card printing, brochure printing, etc. There are tons of billion dollar companies that are trying to stay on top of these keywords, so for me to go head to head would be stupid.

this is where long tail keywords come into play, and where you do your research. an example of a long tail keyword for my industry would be, custom postcard printing, or 24 hour business cards. Typically they are 3 or 4 words, with solid traffic, and lower competition. Just remember people type how they think, and long tail keywords are a way of taking advantage of that.