Hello-
I have a site (woodtoyz.com) that has been around for several years and once ranked well for "wooden toys". Times have changed!

I have tried to examine the top "wooden toy" sites. I have found a lot of the sites have little content on their home page! They have a lot of links pointing to items in their inventory. A lot of these sites appear to focus on "toys" in general yet they still place high for "wooden toys".

I have tried to look at their links using google's links:
I noticed that some of the sites have an unreal number of links, like in the millions! One site seems to get links because of the spelling of their website. Even though the linking sites are not even toy related.

Should I go on a massive quality link campaign? I have tried hard to build good copy and Im culling irrelevant links but I still keep loosing ground

Doing what the "competition do" or what you THINK they do isn't going to do much.

"They" are probably no more "clued up" than you are.

Anchor text of links are only one word/phrase. what about the hundreds or thousands of words and phrase that will bring in qualified traffic?

You have some very nice points.
I am ditching a lot of deadbeat/bad links. I will concentrate on providing better anchor text in my links.

My real concern is: how does a "part time" web builder/toymaker/programmer keep up with sites that can build 100K to 1Million links? I know all of those links are not top notch (quality over quantity) but the sheer numbers seem to be putting these guys near the top. I can probably manage several quality links a week if I am lucky to get a response.

a "part time" web builder/toymaker/programmer keep up with sites that can build 100K to 1Million links?

You don't need to.

but the sheer numbers seem to be putting these guys near the top

SEEM being the operative word.
You have no idea how many or if any of these links are "helping"
And there are very few market places that need massive linking campaigns and yours isn't one of them.

Thanks!
That simplifies things. I will now concentrate on getting quality links after I clean out my current batch.

It sounds like you are worrying too much about back links. Focus on your content and user experience. People will find your site, it cannot be helped. Your real concern is getting them to stay longer and come back. If people like what they find on your site they are more likely to return and tell their friends about it.

I have tried to examine the top "wooden toy" sites. I have found a lot of the sites have little content on their home page! They have a lot of links pointing to items in their inventory. A lot of these sites appear to focus on "toys" in general yet they still place high for "wooden toys".

Yes you are right nearly 3 of the top ranking websites(out of 4) to the keyword 'wooden toy' doesn't have good amount of content on their homepage. But didn't you notice that the keyword is matching to their url, title, description and overall theme? Look at them once again and you will understand.

I have tried to look at their links using google's links:
I noticed that some of the sites have an unreal number of links, like in the millions! One site seems to get links because of the spelling of their website. Even though the linking sites are not even toy related.

Millions? No question because Google.com itself has around 800 links using actual search operator [link:] rather [links:]
And to your question on relevancy, there is another factor Google determines ranking: the 'popularity' of a link.

Should I go on a massive quality link campaign? I have tried hard to build good copy and Im culling irrelevant links but I still keep loosing ground

No massive. Do it with natural intensity of link-building.

Another important thing is you better optimize your site to the keyword 'wooden toys' than to 'wooden toy'. Not only to this, to any keyword you try to optimize keywords based on the natural tendency of a searcher.

Do it with natural intensity of link-building

You CAN'T "do" link building "naturally"!

Link building IS artificial.

thank you for the incite. I guess I will have to try to match my content and description to wooden toys better. I can't change my URL.

I still can not understand why I have dropped from page 2 to 14. I wonder if some of the sites I link with have changed for the worse. I have 700 links to check

I suggest you to continue building quality links. Be careful in building links. Focus on quality high PR sites.

If you build links through different SEO sources, then you can surely win the race. Means you can beat your competitors. you have to perform some daily activities, like article submissions at standard article sites, directory submissions, social bookmarking of your website pages and blog posts, blog within your website which needs to be daily updated, forum posting, blog commenting. Promote your website by creating squidoo lenses

exactly! but you can also add Social networking here and classified ads posting.

Good points. However doing all the online social work gives me no time to make the toys

Is google looking for sites that are socially active. Also is there a social blogging for dummies tutorial? The sites I have seen seem to hate any type of promotion.
Thanks

As Chrishirst said, you don't need millions of links to rank well for your keyword phrases. I would focus on building great toys, writing good content about those toys on your site, promoting your site by letting others know it exists, and build links to your site with your URL's targeted keyword phrase (or slight variations) as the link text.

Find out who is blogging about toys. Send them a sample to review. Search Twitter for people asking for Christmas gift ideas for kids, and let them know about your product. Put out press releases... yada yada yada.

And go after LOTS of keyword phrases related to your product, not just "wooden toys".

A large number of back links help to increase the weight of the site, but the content is always fundamental, the content of your site valuable to users, a good user experience will naturally get a higher weight, so you should do a good job site,

Originally Posted by chrishirst

You CAN'T "do" link building "naturally"!

Link building IS artificial.

Nah sometimes links building is natural, what if any of his customer writes about his experience in his blog? Isn't it a natural backlink?

That simplifies matters. I will now concentrate on becoming character links after I clean out my current batch.

Find out who is blogging about toys. Send them a sample to review. Search Twitter for people asking for Christmas gift ideas for kids, and let them know about your product. Put out press releases... yada yada yada.

Excellent points. I am pretty much a novice when it comes to social sites.
Can you really promote on those sites. I thought they did not like that. When I go on twitter or digg, all I see is a lot of spammy looking posts. Im not sure who is talking to who. In fact, every time I tried to tweet or make a post I felt like no one was listening.

Is there a place where I can find a strategy for using social sites?

You need quality textual links.