I have a pretty strong #5 and briefly #4 rank for a half decent kw term on Google. Coming up #1 on some of the smaller, related terms. I get a small amount of traffic but it's steady and converts decently. I have been trying to move up on the page but the competitors at the top have really strong sites and pages. I don't know if I should focus my energy primarily on this kw or start tackling others as I am sure there are a lot more kw's I can secure first page rankings for. Any advice would be welcomed and appreciated
You could secure a lot more first ranking keywords, but it doesn't mean that it's going to get you a lot more traffic. If I were you, I would focus on getting the #5 rank to the top especially if it's the main keyword in your niche.
Only you know your market. How much will it cost to get #1 for widgets and how much extra trafic will it bring. On the other hand you could target widget service or online widgets or cheap widgets. It may be easier to get on the first page for those terms but will they bring enough trafic?
It depends how hard its going to be for you to move up in rankings for that main keyword. Check out your competitors PR, # of backlinks, and EDU backlinks -- if you are not even close to them on those metrics than your time is probably better spent on other similar keywords that are less competitive.
Continue building backlinks for your website and also keep posting good unique content. My sites also get to position 3 (sometimes 5-6) easily and it's an uphill task after that. You need to spend some money and time in getting quality backlinks.
Once you get into the top 10, stop working on the phrase and move on to the next. Being #1 is great for the ego and bragging rights but having 100 keywords in the top 10 will bring you more traffic/sales.
I'd make it a priority to get that ranking, but also focus on building the site out more. Build more content. Start a blog. Start a forum. Do things to attract social interaction with your site, as well as stickiness. If you have people coming to your site and developing content for you (ie. forum, blog, etc..) then you don't have to worry about "long-tail" develop and you can focus more on getting links. Most people don't think outside the box with long-tail growth of a domain and it's so huge. I have a site that gets 70% of it's traffic because of the long tail. No one would even consider the type of stuff I've developed within this market and it's making the phone ring and online lead forms go like crazy.
Enjoy the ride, relax and create more content. Pages created around long-tail keywords will continue your growth. If you're that solid for the keywords in your niche that people are actually searching on, just concentrate on more pages of content. The SE's are going to do their dances and you're sure to go up and down. Don't sweat it a bit. Good job. Regards, Tony Thomas
If I were you, I would diversify the strategy and look into securing ranking for other keywords as well.
The top few have a lot more links than I do although I have a few strong links (PR6) pointing to me. There PR is higher than mine I am PR2 and they are PR4. I have bought a few links. I usually do it through Digitalpoints. Brokers can leave clues and Google can discover them. I find it safer to do it through sitles like this one. The rest of my backlinks are from article directories, blogs placing my articles, blog commenting, social bookmarking, and directory submissions - free and paid.
Great point! To add to that, I have found focusing on other related terms has helped push up my main terms. Once you start getting more traffic to your site (targeted visitors), then you should start seeing your target kw rank higher. Focus on more interactive content--encourage comments, bookmarking, etc.
Consider this: Apparently the #1 position for a keyword gets something like 40% of the traffic. #2 gets 20%. #3 gets 15% and so on. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I've seen studies like this that have basically shown that getting #1 is what you should be striving for. While being #5 might feel good, you're really missing out on the good stuff!
from http://www.seobook.com/did-google-win-war-paid-links why either or? start aiming now at all the other keywords and continue pushing on the first one too.