What else should we be doing?

[demarini]

I have several keywords that are on the first or second page, with a couple main ones that we are targeting. Around 9million results for the main keyword we are trying to rank for.

We have been writing articles on various high PR sites, posts on various forums with 1-2 signature links, already have been listed in DMOZ/google directory/etc for 8+months, 6 year old domain name, BOTW directory listing and various other directories. We write 1-2 blog posts weekly, and then post the URL on twitter and other social networking sites. 1-2 months ago we re-coded our website to load faster.

So, what else should we be doing that we already aren't to make the jump from page 2-3 to page 1?

I see a lot of recommendations to reach out to related websites and ask to guest post on their blog or come up with a link. In our industry it is very hard to do this, since most related sites are competitors who are selling a commercial product.

[CPU]

There is an SEOMoz tool

Competitive Link Research Tool

that can be used to see if there are certain sites that are providing decent links to multiple competitors.

Also worth investigating the link profiles of competitors using the Open SIte Explorer might give you some ideas of sites to approach.

[SEO-Doctor]

Sounds like your links are just not strong enough. Press release links decay quickly as the release gets pushed down, forum sig links are virtually spam and BOTW links get diluted due to all the others on the page.

Go the extra mile. Make a list of link targets, then create a strategy to get a link from those sites.  Think out of the box!