Over Optimization Question

Built a directory site with 150ish city pages a year ago (before I knew much about on-page optimization). Took a look at the rankings and most pages are between page 2-4. The site url's are similar to abc-keyword . com / city-keyword. Also the keyword is in the title. Same content for every page. Used an expired domain for the site.

My question: Would it be worth it to fix the over optimization or should I just start building some new links? Am I likely getting stuck on page 2-4 because of over optimization or because I haven't done any link building (expired domain with 60-70 referring domains). thanks for the help

if you want rank on first page you have concentrate on both link building as well as optimization of your site.

if you want to participate on competition, you should understand the strength of your competitors.So analysis on your competitors site.

Good Luck

Appreciate the advice. But that's extremely vague. Looking for either

a) "just build some links and see if the rankings move - if they do then don't worry about the over optimization until you hit a wall"

b) "you'll definitely get more ROI by taking the time to fix all the URLs, setup redirects, and hope google is cool with all that site-wide before building links"

Guess I need to just try one and see what happens.

Hi there,
To my knowledge and analysis I feel it is better you keep the old site.
I strongly feel that your site is not affected by over optimization.It's just stuck in 2-4 pages and this could be because of no link building activity to the site.
60 -70 referring domains for a directory site is not going to be enough for the results.
If you managed to rank your site upto second page without any link building,it will be cake walk for you to rank high on building links to the site.
So,start building the links.