Needing a little bit more help pls

Hi,

I have www . vancouvertravelwatch . com and I'm number 11ish for:

Travel deals from vancouver

I have been trying to just provide good travel deals in hops of getting natural links but after almost two years I'm still on page two.

What can I do to boost my site?

Will getting more links with different anchor texts of things like:
travel deals from vancouver
vancouver travel deals
vacations and travel deals from vancouver
vancouver travel specials
deals on travel from vancouver

Is it really the anchor text from other sites that is going to help?

I know that you can't just keep getting the same anchor text over and over again and link exchanges are not as good as one ways. I need to get links in articles and try to be the only link.

Please tell me if I'm about to head out on the right path! I haven't tried to secure new links in well over a year and half.

Thanks

I would look into another way of getting links. What about telling your visitors about different countries they can purchase a deal on your site in some non-standard, interesting way? I mean some tourist stories, photo reports, 101 interesting facts about Turkey (Malaysia, New Zealand, Seychelles, Russia whatever you're selling tours to).

Another idea - you could organize some contest - like "win a free travel by doing this and that" (write a poem, make a funny picture etc) and promote it. You can compose a huge list of must-see sights and places (pyramids, great wall, notre dame etc) in each city with nice photos and real-life (or not so real-life) stories. You can ask your visitors to contribute to this list.

Just a few ideas.

And if you go the contest route, make sure that the winner has to be "voted by users" - this will get people to help you get the word out.

The anchor text will help out, and variations are just natural. Not to mention, the variations will help you rank for those terms as well, so do your research and find out which variations are being searched for. Try and use those if possible.

The articles will help out the most if you can get them posted on other people's sites, not on these big article directories. Those would have helped if you were on, say, page 5 or so, but not with where you sit currently (things are more competitive at the top).

Also see if you can make an impression on some well known blogs in your industry (you can't do this by spamming your links ) and develop a relationship with the owner of that blog. If you play your cards right, you could wind up in a guest blogging scenario, which could potentially pay off in more ways than one.

I think you get the underlying theme of the above posters: Give your visitors a reason to come to your web site. Aside from being just another in a long list, offer something special!

"but I just want to get links and be rich"!

Those days are mostly over

The contest idea is a good one. I would set up a squeeze page on FB for your contest, force people to "like" and "share" the contest page in order to enter. This has worked very well, from the few companies who are actually doing it. There are third-party contest/promotion companies on FB who will oversee your contest and take out some of the legwork too.

To get better organic rankings you may want to exploit the competitor links, especially on the non-redtag and expedia competitors..

I think the social media route would be very rewarding for you if you put forth a healthy effort. User generated content can take you far, Twitter and FB your social media-friendly blog posts/articles, and write some high quality ones specifically for Digg. "Top ten WORST vacation destinations of all time" might get traffic from digg. These would be your fun and entertaining (or slightly weird) articles.

AND -- start building relevant anchor text. Right now, I am seeing a lot of "vancouver departers" as anchor text, if you want to rank higher for: Travel deals from vancouver
you must use that as the anchor text for your back links.