Peter, and other veteran marketers and SEO masters, please help me

[simyan]

Let me start with how I research for the keywords? I have watched the TotalWebSeo videos over and over.... Still wondering if the techniques still work...

Some questions:
1. How do I determine if a keyword is viable to dominate in the search engines? Currently, I have the mindset of selecting keywords from seobook's keyword tool that have less than a million results.... Is this the right way of picking keywords? Am I missing anything?

2. About linking strategies, how many backlinks should be enough to rank in the top 10 for the keywords with less than 1 million results?
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Please review my SEO process too. and correct me in the areas you think I have been doing wrong.

1. Put a base keyword in Seobook kw tool... Go through the list of keywords and check the number of competing sites on Google.

2. Throw away any kws with more than one million results... keep the keywords with less than a million results....

3. Based on the each keyword selected.... write an optimized article / page for the site.

4. Get links from related sites, article directories, web directories, forums...

[fisicx]

Why are you doing this?

Get back to basics. What is the aim of your website? What is your target audience? Get these two firmly in place and then decide the best way to meet their needs.

Articles and blogs are both excellent methods to attracting visitors as long as the articles are interesting and informative. Don't worry about specific keywords just yet, get some articles online and build up the site. Once you have a decent portfolio then start looking for a niche, this is where those keyword tools can come in handy. But remember, just because you find a non-competitive keyword it doesn't mean that anyone is searching for that keyword.

My advice is therefore: forget the tools for now, concentrate on the site content and navigation.