In some sectors it can be as easy as it looks. It's just when the playing field is really competitive that it gets a bit tough. Ranking #1 for 'dentist in irlam' will be levels upon levels easier than ranking for 'dentist in london' in terms of SEO. Similarly the cost-per-click in paid search will probably be orders of magnitude apart and optimising your campaigns will be much harder. Choosing the best keywords for what you'd like to achieve is tricky and figuring that out only happened after I dived in - it's likely a lot of what I've learned there is niche specific too.
