Breaking into the top 10

I'm ranked 16th.. how can I break into the top10?

[synergy]

Hello all. With the new update recently, my site was placed in the top 30 for a competitive keyword. My index page was assigned a PR5, which is equal to or greater than the sites listed in the top 10. After the PR increase I moved up to #16 where I've stayed over the last few weeks. I am ranked #10 when the keyword is searched in quotes.

My question is.. what are the major steps I can take to break into the top 10 searches without the quotes? Should I tweak the denisity/prominence of the keyword? Should I get more quality links (already have 100+) and try to achieve the holy grail of PR6? Will a DMOZ listing push it up?

Thanks.

[synergy]

btt

[John_Caius]

More links from similarly themed sites with good PR, with the competitive term in the anchor text.

[nicheman]

I would be very surprised if the DMOZ link did not help.

Sticky me the URL and I'll be happy to see if there's anything else I could contribute to your ranking.

[Mohamed_E]

Will a DMOZ listing push it up?

With already 100 links getting one more link will have minimal impact, but every bit helps.

[alexweb]

Keep adding more quality content to your site.

[Gus_R]

Welcome to webmasterworld alexweb!

synergy:

Study where top 10 pages make the difference, allinanchor, pr, density, who link them, etc.

[trillianjedi]

Gus_R's points are the place to start. You want to start looking at:-

allinanchor:your_keywords_here

and

allintitle:your_keywords_here

Spot the similarity in the SERPS for allinanchor and a regular search? Therein lies the answer - anchor text and lots of it. DMOZ will help if it's in a decent PR cat. But it's just a link - google carries no extra weight to a dmoz entry, as far as anyone here knows (or is telling).

Page titles are similarly critical and must match your keyphrases as closely as possible.

Your own internal backlinks also help - so the bigger your site in terms of quality high-content pages, the better.

Don't forget to spread the PR love amongst your high value content inner pages. You don't want a massively high ranking index page and the rest of the site nowhere to be seen. You want a whole variety of searches taking people straight to what they want to read about in your site.

I think Brett once said something like "people don't come to your site to view your content, they come to your site to view their content".

Never a truer word spoken in jest.

TJ

[synergy]

Keep adding more quality content to your site.

Monday, I completed 41 additional pages bringing the size of my site to around 50. Google has yet to crawl them.

Internal backlinks and page titles are all good as far as I know. The internal pages all have PR of 4.

Sales have been very slow since achieving the rankings.. I have no marketing experience and it shows. A site ranked 3 positions above me on the same SERP offering the same products for the same prices are getting twice as many sales. It's very frustrating as most of you can probably relate to.