45 pages in Google, only 2-3 are producing anything....

Overwhelmed.......Where do I start?

[kstprod]

My site currently has 45 pages listed in Google, which is excellent for me because thats nearly ALL of them. The problem is, only 2 or 3 pages are ranking for my keywords. The pages that are doing well, are doing very well, in the top 5. I don't know exactly how I did it, I guess just luck, since I am not a SEO expert. I know basics and thats it.

My question is this. Where do I start on the other 42 pages? This may not be many pages to some people, but to me, it's overwhelming. I can't help but to feel like I am missing out on seriously valuable traffic. Does anyone have any ideas on what I should do, or how I should start diving into these terribly ranked pages? When I say terrible, I mean not even in the top 20 pages of serps. This even applies to ALL the big guys, not just Google, although it's most important to me.

Thanks all :)

[bhartzer]

If at all possible, I would start to get external links to those 42 other pages.

[dvduval]

You should do a little planning with your navigation structure. Maybe pick the top 6 pages and link to them from every page on your site. Then start looking at page titles. Are you using unique and descriptive titles with the most important words first? Then start looking at the text on the page. Do you have some text discussing what the page is about? Is it unique to the other pages of your site?

[amazed]

links never do any harm.

but - before doing anything else I would wait for at least a week.

things are in flux.
:-))

[kstprod]

Thanks all.

Just to clarify, my site isn't new or anything. I have some external links to the "dead" pages already, and I already have like 7 or 8 of the important pages linked at the bottom of every page, along with some of the important pages linked up to some of the others. I feel like for the most part, the navigational structure is ok. I think I am just optimizing them wrong. Should I try again to optimize for new keywords on these pages, or go for the same keywords I already have good rank on, so I have more results in the serps? Or should I try optimizing these bad pages for Ink or AV or another SE, and give up on Googling them for now?
I don't know, but its very depressing, as I have all these other pages that are being spidered daily but doing me no good. What kind of budget is needed for hiring a SEO, that could help me take a look at some of these pages?

Added - I'm pretty sure these pages aren't affected by the flux because they have sucked for a while, I just didn't realize it until now. I guess I could be wrong. I think it just all comes down to optimizing, unfortunately :(

Thanks again guys

[WebMistress]

Here is my experience. I optimize different pages for different keywords, which has been successful for getting high in SERPS for numerous kw's. Where I have optimized for the same kw's on more than one page, the higher PR page shows up. If 2-3 pages are ranking well for kw's, not sure why you'd want more of your pages to rank high for the same keywords. If SERPS looked like that, you'd see 10 pages sometimes on page one from one site alone.

I'm sure you'll get lots of feedback on SEO budget from SEO's. I do SEO work, too. But I would tell you that everything you need to know about SEO you can learn by hanging out here and searching for things like PR, inbound links, anchor text, titles, keyword density, internal linking structure, descriptions, optimizing, etc. Read, read, read, but avoid update threads at this time (because you said your site has had this problem even before the update)...and just work on your site....that's my 2 cents.