Important tips that will get you from #30 to #1

Need more opinions

[Expected Man]

Hi mates, this is my first post here, congrats for all of you for the magnificant board. Well I wanted to know your feedbacks about what would get your site from ranking 30-40 to the first spot, lets consider that the basics are there, added some details as bold, red colours to emphasize the importance of keywords you optimize for, relevant backlinks, content, what else would make a difference in your opinion.\
Thanks

[Lorel]

I have been analyzing competitors rank and seeing a wide mix of why someone ranks above the targeted keyword I'm aiming for.

First off, it depends on the popularity of that keyword--the more popular the higher the page rank and backlinks of the competitors. If it's a lesser used word then often a low PR site will be ranking higher.

Also, I have a client who is ranking on 1st page for his major keywords after only 3 months of his site being redesigned but all his traffic is coming via long phrases in the articles he wrote that don't have those words in them--so again, content is king.

[surfgatinho]

Links, links, links.
Did I mention links!
Oh, and they have to be the right sort of links.

Are you guys joking about the red thing. I wouldn't use a font tag if I was paid to, or maybe I would!

[caveman]

No, the red thing is serious. Like ezrydr says, keep it below 5-7% or you're in deep dodo. It's a sitewide penalty too, so even just doing it on one page can sink a whole site. ;-)

Real answer: Links. How you manage your links business matters too. More and more all the time. Any doubts about what to do, just read Brett's 26 steps...and pay attention to what's happening in the (underattended) links forum. :o

[LostOne]

(underattended) links forum..

Ain't that the truth! I used to be one of the whiners during updates(under a different screen name) and discovered the links forum. If you're new here spend a few days over there and the light will come on.

[1Lit]

Interesting.

Keyword density needs to be significantly less than a while back. Our sites which repeat keyword several times have plummetted in Google rankings while sites where it may be only mentioned once or twice among hundreds of words are ranked higher.

Leads to bizarre rankings. The 'Privacy Policy' pages which hardly mention keyword are ranked higher than store home page or others.

[vigo]

just make a stew from Google Yahoo MSN top rankings ,check backlinks and all SEO tricks they use cook them in your brain for a few months and after that start your link campaign.Assuming that you have a minimum 3 years old domain.

[vigo]

serve your site as a main dish to Joe user after 2 years.

[Johan007]

Gold text would rank your page much higher than Red text. But don’t use it on more than 10% of your text. Red text is arguably going to hurt your rankings because Red is for danger unless you’re a Japanese website.

Trust me Gold text is the way forward!