I have been using WA for several weeks now and I really enjoy the flexibility and information I receive from this program as well as with the rank tracker program. I feel both of these programs offer a valuable tool for SEO.

My question for WA is if a site is ranking already in #2 or #3 why would optimizing for the top 10 be useful? Should not this site be only optimizing for sites higher in rank than itself and by including sites lower in page op rank could that not pull that site down?

Maybe I don't understand how the WA online page optimization works in detail, but I would love an explanation as to how the calculation benefits a site with this placement?

Yes, in such cases optimization basing on the average values of the top 10 competitors would not be useful if not harmful. This way you would be using the average density of sites ranking lower than yours as standard one and you might reduce your overall optimization value although the score will.

In fact you do not really need to change anything in terms of onpage optimization for pages ranking so high already. Most probably you need to concentrate on getting the backlinks that will bring you to #1.

The WA software averages the metrics for the top 10 pages. Once you're near the top, I usually make the final push with more links.

Link building is the equivalent of a hot knife through butter. The more links you have, the easier it is to push your rankings up with on page optimization. The amount of link building you'll need to do depends on how competitive the term you're working on is.

Good luck!