Jumping up the rankings?

If you type in "Goalie Crease" we're the last option on the first page. After 9 months of activity, and huge increase in number of Google traffic visits. I'm still not climbing to the top. I've got a relatively niche market, there isn't tens of thousands of sites like mine. There's really only about 10 or so communities relating to my topic, goalies.

What do I have to do to get higher to the top of the search ranking?

We've got thousands 8300+ posts, 940+ threads, 500+ users. Posting every day and adding content.

I'm not complaining I'm quite happy with what I've got, just wondering if there is anything I can do to help move up, instead of waiting here doing nothing more.

http://www.goaliecrease.net

You need to target more/better keywords. I doubt few goalies looking for a forum are going to search for gaolie crease. More likely, goalie forum, or hockey board, etc etc.

Get content created with these other keywords.

I posted this bit in the big board forum last year:

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

SEO is a lot like music. Specifically, the concept of 'theme and variation'.

Nearly everyone knows Beethoven's 5th Symphony ( YouTube - Beethoven's 5th Symphony )
and it is a perfect example of this concept.

0:00 - 1:22 = theme
1:22 - 2:43 = slight variation, almost identical to theme
2:43 - 3:35 = massive variation, re-iterating the theme in another way
and so on....

The result is one of the best/famous/etc pieces of music ever composed. In a time where there were no records, cds, record players, or any other 'media' besides sheet music and an actual orchestra to play it live, somehow, everyone who has even the least bit of culture at least has heard to first 5 seconds of this song. "da da da duh!!!" everyone knows this.

Why?

It's catchy
It's repeated
It's re-iterated over and over throughout the piece
It's in the theme
It's almost in he variation, but not exactly


Your website is the sheet music.
Other websites are the orchestras.

The sheet music to the average person is a bunch of gibberish scribbles that doesn't give anything to them.
the orchestra playing that sheet music, everyone can benefit from, enjoy, and comprehend what the sheet music was supposed to relay.


you can self-link your keywords on your own site all you want, but they will ultimately offer little ranking value. However, if you are able to get others to link to site, or even 'spam' yourself on other blogs in a professional matter (offer a genuine reply with 'more detals at X link') and target your keywords using the theme and vairation concept, and you will be well upon your way.


You'll likely never rank for pizza, nor for best pizza, but you might for best pizza nyc 8th ave. which re-iterates the long-tail concept. If you posted on other pizza blogs about your 8th ave pizza stand, your best pizza stand in nyc, best food on 8th ave, street meat nyc, and other 'theme and variation' of phrases, you might just get truly targeted visitors to your truly targeted phrases of choice.

Well obviously I'm getting searches from Long Tail, but I'm talking about getting higher rankings from specific key words. Like Goalie Crease, or Goalie Forum.

vBSEO has helped a lot with search engine traffic, but what I'm talking about is getting hire with those or a certain specific set of keywords.

Work on internal linking.

If you have a topic/thread specifically about the 'goalie crease', make sure you link to it with those keywords as the link title.

It helps to get both internal (other threads) and even more so from other sites linking in to you with those keywords as the link text.