Though this may read like a short version of the seven deadly sins, it is actually a list of the five hardest industries to get a website ranked well in.

You may notice that your junk email folder is currently full of emails from companies in these industries, hounding you to use the money you win from their poker website to buy penis enlargement pills to take while you look at their porn. That's because these industries are so large, and these kinds of companies are such cut throats that they have no reservations about sending out ridiculous amounts of spam emails and doing whatever it takes to be on top of the search engine results.

As a rule of thumb we don't even accept clients in some of these industries because we know it will take some sort of miracle (or about a million bucks) to make their website rank well. And since they are all pretty dang unholy as it is, we figured God might not be so forthcoming with such a miracle (and the prospective client probably won't want to pony up the million bucks).

#5 - Pills

From steroids to penis enlargement pills, in my experience this is one of the hardest (pardon the pun) industries to get ranked for. Although an argument could be made that there are just so many useless, spammy, pill peddling websites out there that it might not be too difficult to rank a legitimate pill selling business with a well built website (but one would actually have to exist first).

Google search for Viagra: 82,100,000 results.

#4 - Gambling

People love to gamble, and partly due to the popularity of all things poker and Texas hold 'em related, gambling websites have exploded in popularity over the past 5 years or so. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to gamble online, which is probably why this industry has such an overwhelming amount of spam sending, black hat website having, bottom feeders. Sure there are some legit operations (still illegal I think) but they are the exception to the rule. With so many ruthless competitors playing the linking game, it is insanely hard to bring a new site to the top of the rankings.

Google search for poker: 192,000,000 results.

#3 - Mortgages

Money lenders, in particular mortgages companies have A LOT of money to throw at being number one, and there are A LOT of them out there. Let's just say that it may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle then to get a new site onto the first page for a desirable search term in this industry.

Google search for mortgages: 231,000,000

#2 - Porn

Would there even be much of an Internet without porn? It is very difficult to get a site ranked for terms in this industry, and that's that. Long tail (specific terms) are still attainable, but all the big money keywords are extremely competitive and very hard to get sites ranked for.

Google search for porn: 234,000,000 results.

#1 - IT/Web

The reason the IT/Web industry is the most difficult to get ranked in is not that the search term software returns nearly two billion results in Google (although that is a good indicator of the amount of competition there is), but the fact that almost everyone in the IT industry knows about the basics of good site architecture and is familiar with fundamental SEO techniques.

In most industries, a couple of months after the initial on-site optimization phase the site will usually jump above all the amateurs and land somewhere in the first few pages of search results. Following through with a good linking campaign will then propel the website to the top. But to be number one in the IT industry search results you have to be more diligent, have a bigger site with more quality content, and more inbound links to overcome the web savvy competition.

Not to make it so this article culminates in one big shameless plug but it is worth mentioning that it usually requires the assistance of a good SEO company to get a site ranked well in the web/I.T. industry.
Google search for software: 1,880,000,000 results