What can you do to compete with other sites for keywords that you are doing well in, say I have a site with a keyword phrase with page 2 rankings...I want to get to page 1. What are some methods?
you need anchor text links as that keyword and you will rank high for the keyword, a good way to get anchor text links is in the sig of forums
Analyse the keyword and your competition. If the No.1 site is wikipedia, it is highly unlikely that you can outrank it. Building Links would be the first thing to do
"Reverse Engineering" Study your competitors. Check how they placed their keywords and their backlinks, etc. Study everything that make them at the top positions. Then you can start doing actions for you to beat them.
Yes this is true. But one more thing also remember. Check the domain age of your competitor. The old age domains can get the advantage of ranking as compare to new site. So get idea of keywords from there but if your website is new then I suggest use long tail keywords first.
Also make sure the pages content support the key phrase you're using, add few more popular keywords that can support corresponding keyphrases.
I am in the same kind of situation with my gadgets website, I got to page 4 in Google and it was a real push to move it to page 2 in Google but its there. I found that along with link building regular content is king to getting higher in Google (my opinion) but I'm also trying out yahoo and Google groups and posting my site in there which i think has also helped. Hope this helps