How to shoot my local business website up - What's the next step? - Please Review

I have been trying to figure out what to do with my website for a local business and I was just wondering if anyone could help me out with absolutely any ideas.

My website is

As a business we do great, but I feel like we have plateaued and are now in need of being Rank 1 when someone searches "Austin Pet Sitter" "Austin Dog Walker" etc. etc.

1. A tiered back linking strategy. I would like to start building a private network of pet related niche websites to link in and boost my websites in this area. We have various other local small businesses in the process of forming by friends and I feel like this "private network" would be helpful for all the businesses.

I plan to buy around 10 PR2-4 domains and turn them into "pet" related niche sites. Then for each site build a tiered linking system to help boost up those "fake" sites.

2. Changing the content on the site to try to make it a more "Authority" site.

Those are the two main things I feel like I need to do, but I'm not sure where to begin or which one should be started first.

If you think there are any other directions I should go first that would also be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Dustin