Ive been working on back links etc. for the past 5 months or so, at one point I had about 2.1k now i have 1300...I know my keywords are very competitive. But really what does it take? Its getting really frustrating. Does it take a 50k budget to rank well?

website is www.credit-wisdom.com

please review and let me know what I need to do to get top rankings for at least some keywords

improve your content and link popularity...use your targeted keywords as your anchor text that might help for you to have better rank on those keywords...submit your site to link directories, create article and submit them to article directories, join forums, create blog and comment to other blogs, try social bookmarking sites, link baiting and link exchange...also you can use your money like for PPC...try to target less popular keywords first then if you already have better rankings there then that will be the time to go on with those popular keywords....SEO is a continouos process so be patient...good luck

Naw... I wouldn't charge U anything NEAR $50k.. have your secretary call mine.. he he.. Oh crap, I don't have one!

Seriously, simply throwing links against the wall and hoping they will stick isn't the whole gig.. or I wouldn't get paid for it

5 months is NOT a long time subjectively speaking. I have seen terms take 12 months... So the competitiveness can make a difference

So can on-page work...never underestimate it.. it cuts back on the number of links one needs to rank well….

__________________
David Harry
Affordable SEO Services | Learn SEO

sometimes, it really takes time to improve your rankings especially when you have many competitors. hardwork and patience is main key.

just continue what you are doing and follow the other advices of the people here, you'll see it will pay off too

I appreciate the input guys, I kinda was thinking it would just take time...I guess sometimes I just get inpatient.

One question though, our biggest competitor is showing like 27k backlinks on directorycritic.com Does this mean we need this many also? Or just focus on more onpage like you said with a decent amount of backlinks

Just keep trucking.

Have you tried some of the long tail niche search keywords? Its never a bad idea to have some pages on your site for niche keywords. For example i see you already have student credit cards as a page, you can find relevant backlinks for that page. What are some other niches you can use? Military Credit cards? does anyone do that? Seniors cards? Make use of keyword selector tools. I like the Yahoo Keyword tool - found here: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/ . but it hasnt been working recently for me. Maybe someone else has more luck with it.

__________________
Pets Dressed.com: For the Best Dressed Pets ~ Ferocious Feline: Rights, Rants and Kitty Cats

thats a very good idea auliya thanks for the tips

__________________
Credit Card Guides
Credit Cards, Travel, Cell Phones and Internet

as far as the website what do you guys think, its all div tags except the card tables.

__________________
Credit Card Guides
Credit Cards, Travel, Cell Phones and Internet

my suggestion is to check your keywords density and prominence.. make your density below 4% and if you can make your prominence higher than 80+ percent, do it so that the crawlers can check what are the keywords that you want to target.. put an h1 for your main targeted keywords.. hope my advice would help you..

Here are a TON of link building ideas for you ;

101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006;
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml

Where to start a Link building Campaign;
http://www.linkbuildingblog.com/200..._matters_s.html

Advanced Link Building;
http://www.seomoz.org/articles/adva...nk-building.php

Link building tactics and relevance;
http://www.seomoz.org/articles/adva...nk-building.php

Link Development vs. Traffic Development and Staying with the Times
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum12/3047.htm

The Right honorable Matt Cutts on Link baiting;
http://mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advic...nd-linkbaiting/

Unconventional Link building techniques
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000895.shtml

__________________
David Harry
Affordable SEO Services | Learn SEO