The question asked about being stuck brings up a good point.
If all you do is push to your home page that may not be enough. Yes you may have a page on the site that has perfect on page seo but that does not mean you can rank the home page for that keyword.
It really does not matter if it is the home page or an interior page that ranks, as long as one of them does. I know that my home page could never rank for some of my keywords because it does not have the on page seo to do it. For this reason I push the interior page. Since I have done this, the pages climb faster than the home page because of the on page seo.
If you have a site dedicated to Blue Whales and one of your target keywords is Whale Hunters, target the push at the page that talks about Whale Hunters and not the home page.