OK, background on my site: I've had my domain since March 2006, built up a lot of content on a Simple Machines forum and didn't SEO it or make it live so to speak until January 2007 when I switched to Vbulletin. Overall I've been slacking in getting backlinks in G (have only 92), but have added a TON of good content. I've been using the McDar keyword analysis tool to figure out allinanchor for my site, as well as where I place in the SERPs. Now, for some keywords/keyphrases I rank very high in Google (1st page), and have very similar allinanchor rankings compared to that high Google ranking. However, there are also a lot of keywords/keyphrases where the allinanchor ranking is really great, but the google SERP ranking is really bad. For these keywords/keyphrases where my allinanchor is really good but my Google SERP is really bad, do I need to focus more on the "on page factors" or more on the incoming links? To give you an idea on how far off some of them are, I have one keyphrase where my Google Ranking is #43, but my Allinanchor ranking is #5. I have another keyphrase where my Google Ranking is #132 but my Allinanchor ranking is #9. I have a few more that are just like this. What can I do to bump these higher in the SERPs? Of note, these "keyphrases" I mentioned above that have the huge gaps between Google and the Allinanchor are fairly new keywords (within the last say 3 months).
I think you are correct in saying on page optimisation is what might be holding you back. I would say the other important searches you should do in Google to judge your potential reankings are intitle and inurl It is going to be a case of experimenting with on page optimisation to see what works.
i think both are important but you have to focus on on site factors. when you finished on site seo, it's time to focus on backlinks. but the first one must be on site seo
Since I'm running a messageboard using VBulletin, I figured VBSEO took care of a lot of that, plus I had some help from the "Searchmaster."