Top ranks for new secondary pages??

[onedodd]

We all know about the Google sandbox and the ranking delay new sites experience for all the but the most obscure keywords.
Suppose you have a site that ranks fairly well, maybe top ten for its targeted keywords and you add new pages targeting a new keyword or niche but still totally related to your main content, do these new pages get some type of filter that keeps them out of the top ten or twenty?
I have added some new pages and seems like they get to page 3 or 4 and thats it. Most if not all the sites in front of me have been around for some time and I am wondering how hard it is to get past these older established pages? Do I have to let the new pages age maybe? Should I try to get a few links pointing directly to the secondary pages?
Of course this assumes I have the correct optimization compared to the top pages in the index, I haven't done much in the way of going back and tweaking the already optimized pages yet.


A little thought on this would be great - Thanks.