I am having trouble breaking into the top 10, for "free classified ads" in US Google result, I have been between #11 to #20 since march, and I feel I am hitting a brick wall. I tried article submissions, social bookmarking, classified ads posting, blog commenting, press releases, etc... I went from 1100 indexed links to over 5000+ in Google Webmaster Tools. But seems like I am not gaining much rank at all. Any suggestions as to how to break into top 10 for that keyword? Or should I focus on different keywords and different URLs around? I have been spreading the SEO effort around two dozen keywords to create a more balanced link built, but I fear that might dilute the effort. Not sure what to do.
Are you using a tool Liek Seo Quake or Seo For Firefox to see how many links you competition has? I would think that Free Classified Ads would be pretty competitive Jack
Yea, I used SEO quake for a while, it is far more competitive than most of other niches since top competitors are well established and have fairly high page rank, and I wouldn't even dream of competing for #1 (craigslist!). So I'd probably have to get optimize some less searched terms, I guess.
page 2 is still an excellent result for a keyword like that! how long have you been running that site? the key is time - keep at it and you will get there - you seem to be putting in the effort!
i c your site at #11 for your term. moving up only one spot can get you to the front page which should not be very hard to do. all you need is some high quality contextual backlinks