So first off, GREAT READ! This is very informative. However, I have some questions. To start out, I have been working on one main site and one e-commerce site for an architecture firm to which I am starting SEO work. I have both sites linked in for google analytics and webmaster tools and Alexa ranking to check on that. I also use Serpfox for a few keywords I'm trying to rank for as well as reading in these forums for any extra info I can add. The past few months traffic has been around 1.5k visitors and my bounce rate has been around 55% steady. Now my problems are that I'm having trouble gaining placement for certain keywords and having trouble placing higher then my competitors as well as lowering my bounce rate and driving traffic up. What else can I do (before paying for ads AKA PPV/PPC) that can help me gain traffic and lower my bounce rate as well as rank these handful of keywords higher?