Please critique my SEO plan

Hi all,

My business partner and I are trying to come up with SEO plan to help get out of no-where land.

Any advice you can share would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance.



Objective: To create an on-going SEO strategy

Problem: http://www.allthepieces.com is not being recognized at all for most, if not all, of our strongest keywords.

Keywords include: wedding, invitations, wedding invitations, save the date cards, wedding ceremony programs, thank you cards, bridal shower cards, baby shower cards, quinceanera invitations, stationery

Solution/Plan:
1) Continue to maintain reciprocal links pages at: http://www.allthepieces.com/Information.aspx
No more than 50 links per page, only wedding and event planning links allowed. All exchanged links will be done manually and no automatic submissions.

Questions: What is a number of links to strive for? We currently have about 100 reciprocal links. Is 250 enough? 500 enough? Is there a point where too many links hurt us?

2) Continue to submit to directories. At this point we have submitted to at least 100 directories – both wedding specific and general.

Questions: Again, is there a number of directories to strive for? We will continue to check back and see if our site is actually being listed, but what is a healthy number of directories to strive for? How effective are the small directories? Should we fork over some $$ for a paid listing? If so, where should we try, and how much can we expect to pay?

3) Begin submitting press releases.

Questions: I have a list of about a dozen free press release sites, how effective are these compared to the paid press release sites? I don’t particularly care if anyone really reads the press releases, this is purely for site optimization. When we write press releases, is it harmful to release the same text on several sites?

4) Begin submitting industry related articles with links to our site.

Question: Again, When we write articles, is it harmful to release the same text on several sites?


5) Begin blogging - start two industry related blogs with plenty of links to our site.




What else are we not thinking of? What else might help. Any suggestions whatsoever will help.

Can anyone speak positively about pay-per-click? I tried it once with a very restricted budget and did not feel it increased the number of orders placed.

Thanks again everyone. I really appreciate it!

 

As far as the number of links you should strive for, in my mind one link equates to a minimum of one visitor. That means if your site has 250 backlinks, that would logically mean you should be getting a minimum of 250 visits a day or more. I would advice you to get as many links as possible. In fact, I advise you to never stop getting link exchanges. I've seen people lose PR because they got a high pr and decided to stop exchanging links.

100 directories is nothing. I submitted one of my sites to 400 directories and did not immediately see results. My advice is to submit to about 600 directories and pay for top placement and pr in a few. Or pay someone money and have them do it for you. Their are cost effective options out there.

It is best to pay for a press release. The last time I did a press release I paid around 30 bucks at www.prweb.com.

As far as releasing the same text of articles on your other sites, that should not be a problem. I've never seen Google penalize anyone and the "duplicate content" penalty is overrated in my opinion.

Payperclick is good, but it is critical that you strategically right your ad so it catches the surfers eyes. Don't trick them. What I like to do with payperclick is when I write my ad, I let everyone no the starting price of whatever item or service I'm offering. Otherwise they may click on my link looking for a freebie and therefore have cost me money.

Payperclick is cool, just do detailed keyword research and right a killer catchphrase.