'Hard Money Lenders' not competitive, but still low in SERPs

[randfish]

I've been optimizing a site - www.avatarfinancial.com for the term 'hard money lenders' for some time now (since mid-May). Yahoo! and MSN seem to love the work that I've put in, but Google doesn't.

I think I'm hitting all the right spots, but I can't figure out what I'm missing:

On-Page Optimization - Title, Text, alt tags, links, etc

Anchor Text - Got about 25 links (on mostly low PR pages unfortunately) pointing with varied versions of keyword phrase - 'hard money', 'hard money lender', 'commercial hard money', etc.

Backlinks - 46 through Yahoo, 23 by Google, 43 by Alltheweb

Top Listings - Out of Google's top 10 results for the page, I'm linked to by 3 of them (with 2 more pending)

Competition - Doesn't seem too rough, no one in the top 10 has many backlinks or high PR and their on-page optimization is generally terrible.

What have I forgotten that Google values over Yahoo & MSN? I know I shouldn't neccessarily be top 10, but right now I'm not in the top 250!

Thanks for your help!

[fathom]

Flip your titles around

Avatar Financial Group | Hard Money Lenders & Bridge Loans change to

Hard Money Lenders & Bridge Loans @ Avatar Financial Group

Decrease title="" in links to be precisely what thelink anchor test is.

When a link reads "Hard Money Lenders" but the title="" reads "Avatar Financial: Information on Hard Money Commercial Lenders" it dilutes what you are attempting toi target on the Link to" page.

...and get more links! :-)

[Dave Hawley]

I would also make "Hard Money Lenders" a h1 heading right at the top of the page.

Other than getting links with the anchor text "Hard Money Lenders" I would make other changes slowly giving each time to take effect. It's a common mistake made by most, make x changes all at once, move up/down in the SERP's and have no idea why.

[randfish]

I appreciate your input and I've taken you up on some suggestions. Hopefully it will help. I have a lot more links on the way and some higher PR.

Thanks again and if there's any other suggestions you have, please let me know!