Okay so I have a website that is 2 years old, I just partnered with the owner and I have managed to get him from 10th page on google to top of 2nd page of google with a little bit of work. These are broad keywords too! I am ranking well on the locally optimized keywords, but I REALLY want to hit front page for the broad keywords. The keywords generate about 22,000 - 49,000 hits per month according to google. How much effort do you think it would take to bump me from top of 2nd page in Google to Front page of google?
Do a small spreadsheet and plug in all the first 10 sites on page 1 of the SERPs, and analyze them in terms of PR, Back links, where their back links are coming from, if they are included in DMOZ or not, etc - the general SEO stuff. Then pick the weakest guy on page 1 you think you can beat with your SEO skills, then try to match them, if not beat them on each of those factors. Say you really wanted to knock off the guy occupying position 5 on page 1, for example: Beat him at everything (both On-page and off-page factors) - if they have 50 links make sure you get 60 better links, etc - and then wait for the results.
your effort for the desired ranking can't be quantified...carry on seo and sem processes honestly continuosly on daily basis and you will achieve it maybe in a month or two
On the contrary it can. I all depends on who you are competing against and what they have done so far. You can very well benchmark your efforts against your competition. If you just carried on your seo and sem processes without taking into consideration your competition, how would you know how work you need to do in order to beat them?
You should do some research on your competition to find out how many backlinks they have and how long they have been around, and you should continue to build backlinks and try to get backlinks from different sources, and try to get some backlinks from some of the sites that link to your competition if it's possible.
u didn't need to be panic as u just need smaal effprt to be on page 1, just do submission daily, directory, blogs classifieds,