Well, around three months ago, I started a website around a couple of pretty competitive keywords. Now, I usually average 5-10 visitors from Google each day and 20 daily visitors total. I've reached sort of a plateau with the amount of visitors I've been receiving. The following is my routine for the website: I write a new article of this website every week, but everyday, I go into the Directory Announcements section of this forum, and I add my website to the new directories. That's all I have been doing since the start of my website. What else can I do? I can't trade links with other people until Google's next big update since my website holds a PR of 0. My website is pretty heavily optimized for SEO. How would I increase my rank in Google? Should I just continue what I've been doing, and perhaps it's just a matter of time? Or is there something that I should be doing differently? Just to edit: Basically, how would I increase my search engine traffic when targetting a hard term with no cash for advertisement?
You need loads of links from high PR, high quality relevant sites. Unless you have these you don't have a chance of ranking. Look at how many links your competition has.
Hmm... the top few pages have plenty of backlinks. I don't think I will be able to reach the amount without some solid links since all of mine are from directories. Should I target obscure keywords in each of the pages?
Obscure keywords....or longer keyphrases. Longer keyphrases tend to convert better since they are more targeted, and they are easier to rank for than more generic or general keyphrases. Find a keyword tool and research.
Get off you backside and carry out some PROPER keyword research! If you are targeting a 'couple of keywords" then you have one hell of a long wait. Carry out extensive exhaustive keyword research, and build your pages around them. Traffic will come gradually as the pages get picked up.
If you have been writing a new article every week, I gather that means you have added around 12 new articles to this site since launch? That's not many. You should probably concentrate more on writing content, and do your directory submissions no more than fortnightly. Otherwise it's not a very efficient use of your time.
I'm using some guidelines from Aaron's blog to find low competition keywords with the allinanchor method. Let's say I stumble upon some that relate to the site's subject, and I build articles from each of them. Should I continue getting links with anchor text pertaining towards the main keyword or towards the little competitive keywords? If you had a website built around crawfish(made up), would you build links with the anchor text "crawfish" or "crawfish light carapace"?
BOTH! You need to get as many links to as many different pages as possible. The GOLDEN rule of link building is link to and from the most relevant pages.
Kelp, what would a searcher look for when trying to find your site? Figure out about 10 different permutations of a word/phrase including mispellings and get to work. It's not that difficult, you could pay me $1,000 a month for link exchange, or you can do it yourself. I tell everyone I meet, THINK like a computer, what could you possibly use to compare two files in terms of relevancy - usually your first guess is what you should focus on... unless your guess is "I don't know" Links, some content, and articles if you want - stick to the keywords that will get you business, too many people treat "SEO" as a game and goof off - just use your head and decide - then optimize, or pay somebody else. Either way - Good luck!