Over-optimised?

Hi and sorry to ask a rookie question by I'm hoping that one of you kind experts might be able to help.

My site (see links below or profile) is doing really well for most of our targetted keywords/phrases (use site section titles to search on - often in top 10 and occasionally first.

Trouble is, I can't work out why we don't rank higher for 'silver jewellery' - currently up in the 300's. Could we be being penalised for something - e.g. over optimised?

Now I know the stock answers will be to get more quality links for that phrase, improve on site optimisation for that phrase etc. but when I analyse the competition, I don't see than doing any more than we already are.

Any suggestions? - I'll also take feedback on the site generally as I haven't asked for 18 months or so.

Many thanks.

How are you to determine how effective your competitors SEO is and whether or not you should be out ranking them?

If your going by link count then I can tell you this is a waste of time. I can rank a site with 10 links above a site with 100 links by focusing on quantity.

My advice would be to stop worrying about what your competition is doing and focus your attention on what you need to do to beat them.

What will you need to do to beat them? Get better quality links and create content that blows them out of the water.

The reason you hear this a lot on this forum is that it works

Yeah I kind of expected that response but thanks anyway.

The point of my original post was rather to question why most of my 2 or 3 word phrase SERPS are 1st page listed but the phrase 'silver jewellery' on which I have focused on and off page SEO, is way back - as if over optimised if there can be such a thing?

Don't forget general comments on the site if any of you have time.

Silver Jewellery is likely a vey competitive term hence the difficulty ranking.

Spell check: jewelry. jewellry isn't a word and someone along # 300 spells the same way you do. I looked at your meta tags and it is misspelled there also. Too simple. Spell it right and you will be amazed. As far as your site goes, I would lower your header. Other than that it is real nice on the eyes.

That's interesting because I did that deliberately to cover user misspells.

The less words you target, the more competitive normally as the term is very broad. When you use "womens silver jewellery" you make the term much more specific and much more targeted thus targeting a less competitive term. The more "long tail" your terms are, the less competition usually and the more targeted. These terms will also be your better converters in the long run. They may not generate much traffic but you should see more conversions.

I didn't look at your site but make sure the misspelled terms are in the content as well. Start building links using the misspellings if these are the words you desire to rank for. It comes down to quality links and unique content like lewisb said. It's not the # of links but the quality of those links.

The meta tags were the only place I could see that spelling - where else did you see it?

Regarding the header - I agree, but I'm stuck with template constraints for now.

Thanks for the feedback.