I am getting a bit desperate with one site I have. It's struggling to get into the top 10 for a search term... I tweaked and tweaked but I can't get into the top 10... is it all in the back links with that term? The other 10 are powerful contenders too, but their meta tags are often a mess... and so are their index pages... being at 12/14 is a good job but I want to be up there!
If you haven't already, you may want to do some research into locale specific online business directories in the areas that you serve. They're often free and can be a good source of some backlink mojo - at the worst they can give you some fairly qualified trickle through traffic. Look for some popular search phrases related to business directories in your area and see what's out there "e.g. california yellow pages". There are hundreds of other things you could do, but that was at the top of my head.
Good idea, this is more of a lifestyle website, an ezine... which makes it even harder since it's a very competitive market when it comes to rankings.