Hi,

I'd really like to get any ideas on how to improve my SERP for some 3 Keyword Phrases I have been targetting.

Thank you!

Hi
Start with the basics, make sure the 3 words are in the Title tag, description tag, H1 tag and within the content of the page, if the 3 words can be used in a different order, make sure that is in the text as well, would also be good to have an incoming link to the page containing those words.

HTH

Thanks, for your recommendations. I appreciate that. What else can I do despite these first steps you have mentioned?

make sure your html is validating properly.

How can I do this?

you can use the w3c validator service [validator.w3.org] or install the HTML Tidy plugin [tidy.sourceforge.net] for firefox.

ok, thank you for the explanation. And maybe there are other ways, how to improve my SERP?

Get quality links into your website with those keywords as the anchor text. If those 3 keywords are high competition, you might want to consider trying to get the low hanging fruit (keywords in the same industry but with less competition) first.

Ok, I appreciate your idea.What else ca I do?

Um... do a bit of research? We've covered this question hundreds of times [google.com].

If you can afford hire an SEO :)

Build Inbound links and make sure to used varied anchor text.

Links are the most important factor which affect and improve rankings for highly searched and competitive keywords. Adding quality content and pages to your website is also which you should focus on, as they attract natural links over time.

You may want to focus more on the actual content of your pages. Getting inbound links is one thing, but research has shown that "content is still king". I for one have seen a PR2 page rank higher than a PR5 page for most relevant keywords.

Increase your keyword density and check placement too. It has been proven time and time again that SE's consider words closer to the top/bottom of a page more relevant to the page's content.

I could go on and on, but still maintain that content is still king....

Here's my list.
1) Free Press releases
2) Forum Sigs
3) <Major Classified sites>
4) A Blog entry, and adding to Blogroll
5) Directory submission
6) Article posting
7) Social bookmarking

[edited by: caveman at 6:46 pm (utc) on Oct. 14, 2008]
[edit reason] Removed specific site mentions, per TOS. [/edit]