Local SEO is harder than I thought!

I'm a newbie to this forum, but I've been searching, lurking, reading everything that I can for the past few weeks.

Just so you know who I am, and what I'm all about... I'm a small, local, computer repair and IT services shop in Loveland Colorado. We perform on-site computer repair and IT for residential and small business in a tri-city area.

When I first started by business about 6 years ago, I threw up my page in a couple of weeks and it was instantly on the first page of Google for search phrases such as "computer repair fort collins" and such. Since I didn't have a lot of competition (although there was some) I was there at the top for over a year.

But, then (since I was busy with work) I stopped checking my SERPs for those keywords. The years rolled by, and I paid no attention to my Google status.

Well, about 2 months ago, in the midst of revamping my web page, I checked those same keywords... and I was on page 8! Wow. Talk about out of sight, out of mind. Who goes to the 8th page of the SERPs? Yikes.

So, I got to work on some SEO. I worked on keywords and phrases on my site. I streamed my latest blog post excerpts to the front page, making my page a bit more "dynamic". I did the same with my twitter feed. I wrote a number of articles and posted them to various sites, including on ezinearticles, goarticles, squidoo. I started blogging on the local Fort Collins newspaper website in their "community blogs" section. I've posted numerous anchor-laden links on sites that backlink (I use Quirk SearchStatus to find them).

Well, after all of this, I moved up from page 8, to page 4, to page 3... and then page 2. Sometimes, if the planets are align just right, I might be found at the very bottom of page 1. But, by morning it's usually back to the top of page 2.

What I don't understand is how my competitors are still ahead of me. I look at their web pages, and they don't have nearly the content that I have. I have also performed a search for links that point to their site, and I don't see a lot (if any). I'm also seeing a lot of directory-type results coming up, such as a site that will list a lot of business on it from the local area.

And, of course, there are the Google LOCAL results that I have to contend with. You know... the ones that show beside the little map that is ALWAYS at the top (Grrrr). I'm nowhere on that map at all.

One thing that many of these businesses have on me is their physical address. Although I am targeting Fort Collins businesses, I have an address in the adjoining city. The city I live in is small, but the city I'm TARGETING is a much larger market... but, I don't technically have an address there. But, it's where most of my on-site clients are located.

I would have thought that getting to the top and being a big fish in a small pond would have been much easier than what many of you guys do for a living (being a big fish in the BIG pond). But, beating out my few competitors in my local market has proven harder than I thought.

So, what advice would you give a lowly computer repair guy trying get back to the top of the Google search results? Should I get a local P.O. Box in Fort Collins (my target) for local search purposes? Should I skip the article writing and do more blogging (which brings in random global visitors and doesn't benefit me much)? Should I write more articles?

I'm open to suggestions! Please help!