graeme_p - 8:22 am on Jul 27, 2012 (gmt 0)

I seemed to get much better rankings for similar material my personal blog rather than a blog on the site. I am not sure which is better for authority.

@adder, writing is what I do best. Link building is my most problematic weakness.

@JohnRoy, it has over a thousand information pages. A lot of them are more detailed than any competitor except Wikipedia - and they are better written than the Wikipedia pages. I have quite a few pages in first of second place in the SERPS but, after a drop in rankings a few months ago, these are all for low volume searches.

The two possible approaches I am now thinking of are:

1) Build relationships with other site owners in my niche: blog, tweet can comment more. Probably do not ask for links, but just make sure they know my site exists. As there are not direct competitors they should be willing to link back.
2) Pay someone good to do a one off fee to design a strategy. If I save my few hundred dollars a month for a few months I can afford someone reasonable good. After than pay someone local I can easily supervise, not an SEO, to link build.