Hello, I am asking the opinion of some people who really know what they're doing with Google SEO. I have a web site that is about a month old. The search term I'm targeting gets about 7,000 searches per month that is pretty competitive. I am currently mid 4th page for the keyword I want. I've been doing moderate manual directory submissions about 10-20 per day on average. Is this good so far? Any suggestions?
Since you have asked, permit me to be blunt. You are wasting your time. The search volumes reported by Google are meaningless because most of them are generated by webmasters, SEOs and software constantly checking Google rankings. Most searches don't result in any clicks. Knowing clickthough statistics would be extremely useful, but Google reports no such thing. Submissions to free directories are a waste of time. Rankings are meaningless without knowing the extent of the competition for the given keyword. Consider hiring a professional.
directory alone won't help your site to rank well or if ever it won't stay there for long you need to get links in related site and with good ranking to also try other link building strategy.
Directory submission is worthless IMO, you should use another method to get back links. Also quality > quantity, and on-site SEO are very important so you may like to do that if you haven't already.
I think you are putting up a good effort , try article submission with some original content and also use social media , this will help you a lot