Site moving down gradually in Google in spite of SEO efforts

[aroon]

I ranked around 12th on google for a particular, pretty broad keyword. I wanted to get onto page 1 so I decided to submit my site to a few directories, open a youtube channel, and create a facebook page. Recently within the past week and a half every my site goes down in rank 1 spot consistently. Now I am ranked 26. What can I do to at least get back on page 2 if not page 1

[piatkow]

Focus on content rather than on links. Do the main keywords appear on page, in the description and in the title?

[aroon]

Yes of course. All pages are optimized well. In fact we tinkered with the meta tags and titles recently for better optimization. Could this have a negative effect on our rankings? At least for awhile?

[CWebguy]

could be competition increased,
could be sometimes new sites rank well initially

[Robert Charlton]

aroon - How old is the site? New sites on Google are generally given a "honeymoon period", higher initial rankings... but unless these are supported by relevant links of sufficient quality, the ranking will gradually go down. This may be what you're seeing.

Additionally, title changes can have either a positive or negative effect on rankings. I've seen title changes that were ultimately beneficial have a negative initial effect.

Meta tags should not affect rankings on Google at all.

[tangor]

Recent optimization efforts might also have a slight disadvantage until Google determines this is "final" and not "SEO for the sake of SEO".

[aroon]

The site is about 10 years old. I believe our title changes were for the better. Also with the increase in link building I am doing (directories, articles, social bookmarks, facebook, youtube) shouldn't the site go up?

[tangor]

Probably will... just give it time. These changes will not happen overnight, or even over a month. Give it a few weeks to see what happens. Also bear in mind that surfing these days is not the same as it was before the recession. Be patient.

[Robert Charlton]

...not "SEO for the sake of SEO".

In this regard, also make sure that your inbound links have "natural" anchor text and source variation.

[idolw]

stop going for directories and go for links from real sites. As few as 5 links can get you a page or two up.
facebook and youtube won't help you in temrs of rankings.

[aroon]

Ok I think I need to improve my internal linking structure.
If I want my index page to rank for a certain keyword. Should I change all anchor text pointing to my index page to this particular keyword?

And if so, is there any point in time where I should stop and not over do it?

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Just ensure that your Anchors look natural and you should not overdo any effort.

[JohnRoy]

As few as 5 links can get you a page or two up.

Depends on the
1. page rank of pages where those 5 links appear.
2. relevance of pages (where links appear) in terms of the keywords targeted.

Otherwise, 5 links pushing up a page or two for broad kw?!